Welcome to Wigwam, A Home Economy Journal
About the mission
The much ballyhooed industrial, globalized economy is experiencing a few difficulties. As it contracts, it makes sense to expand our home economies. We use ‘home’ to mean a household, a city or town, and the Hudson Valley region. Wigwam will tell the stories of how this home economy expansion is happening, and give you ideas and inspiration, so that you can make it happen, too.
About the content
In addition to home-ec related content, Wigwam offers regular coverage of issues that affect place making, such as city planning, zoning laws, transportation, new businesses, and new development. We also look at the people and organizations taking steps to nurture home economies.
Our events calendar features workshops, seminars, and happenings that help build our local economy or teach skills like canning and raising chickens. Other plans include short instructional videos and Wigwam Radio. We hope you’ll get involved, as a reader or contributor.
About the name
Native American place names abound here in the Hudson Valley. Wigwam, a Native American word for home or dwelling, particularly in the northeast, was chosen to evoke this culture’s relationship to the planet—how they lived successfully for thousands of years in the same places the dominant culture now does, while doing little harm. Ideally, the use of the name will draw more positive acknowledgement of the culture that was here before the current one.
It was chosen out of respect. Not as the literal notion that Hudson Valley residents, whether Native American or not, should or could strive to go back to living in wigwams, but as a reminder of the values inherent in that kind of dwelling, and a reminder of the values of the people who used the word, an inspiration to look at ways we can all live more harmoniously with our surroundings going into the future—starting at home.