What Educators Say

"Thank you to you, your lineage of Grandmothers and Grandfathers, to all the Life that keeps you thumping and moving around in this world carrying this most majestic bundle of Stories. My praises to you, Tom Doty."

Jamie Fahey-Blea, Teacher, The Siskiyou School

"Thomas Doty is a rarity -- a scholar whose work does not smack of lampblack or the dust of archaeology, a poet who brings the power of aptly chosen words to every facet of life. His skills delight the young and the old."

Robert Casebeer, Poet and Emeritus Professor, Department of English, Southern Oregon University

What the Rock People Say

In traditional native cultures, not all stories were passed through the oral tradition. Some were "published" -- carved and painted on boulders and cliffs by the first storytellers, the Rock People. In his Guide to Native Rock Writings, Thomas Doty shares the ancient knowledge of how symbols are shaped into stories. The landscape has a language!

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This Illustrated, Digital Edition is a high quality PDF. Read it online, download it to your device, add it to your favorite reading app (Books, Kindle, Nook), or print it out.

Guide to Native Rock Writings

In the mid 1980s, Thomas Doty and Roy Phillips co-founded the Reading the Rocks Project. Together they visited dozens of sites ... documenting, interpreting and protecting these cultural treasures. Bernice Mitchell, a Wasco and Northern Paiute storyteller, once told Doty: "You can read them! There is an Old Time word for writing in our language." Indeed, you can. And here's a Guide to get you started.

37 page PDF, 23.8 MB. Digitally signed, with photos & drawings by the author.

Download Guide (PDF)