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Cascadia is a proposed name for the independent sovereign state that would be formed by the union of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon were these states and province ever to successfully secede from their respective federal governments in Ottawa and Washington D.C.. The boundaries of this Cascadia would incorporate those of the existing province and states.
History
The idea for an autonomous or independent Cascadian state first arose after Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark into the Pacific Northwest in 1803. Jefferson envisioned the establishment of an independent nation in the Western portion of the North American continent that he dubbed the "Republic of the Pacific". Jefferson's original idea has since been embraced by a number of different groups with generally similar aims.
Elements among the region's population sought to secede from the United States and form their own country from the very beginning of Oregon's statehood. While the Southern states broke away to form the Confederacy, some Oregonians saw it as a perfect opportunity to do the same and give new life to Jefferson's original idea, by trying to establish a country under Jefferson's name: the "Republic of the Pacific" . The American government launched a successful propaganda attack to destroy the movement by trying to associate the Pacific movement with a group called the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was a pro-Confederate, pro-slavery organization.
At the same time, other movements inside of Cascadia, such as the Klamath movement, Trinity and Jackson movements all sought to wrench certain areas of Cascadia free from U.S. control. These too failed, largely by being put down through various uses of force.
In the 1930s, the State of Jefferson movement came into being and is, to date, the best known of such movements in the region. The movement was created to draw attention to the area by proposing that Southern Oregon and Northern California form a separate state. As this is historically a depressed area, many locals placed the blame on the governments of Salem and Sacramento. For that reason, a flag bearing two X's and a gold pan was adopted. The two X's represented the so-called "double crosses" from Sacramento and Salem.
In 1956, groups from Cave Junction, Oregon and Dunsmuir, California threatened to tear Southern Oregon and Northern California from their respective state rulers to form the State of Shasta. Several of the organizers involved took it one step further and threatened the federal government with armed resistance unless certain demands were met.
In more recent years, a more organized movement calling for the re-unification of the original Oregon Country, which included the area of the modern day southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, into a single entity for the purpose of gaining independence from both the United States and Canada has come into being under the name of the Evergreen Revolution. Supporters of the Evergreen Revolution hope to one day achieve the independence of Cascadia through peaceful means.
Today, the main group actively pursuing secession is the Republic of Cascadia and the Cascadian Independence Project.
Boundaries
Some groups have sought to extend the interpretation of "Cascadia" to embrace parts of Northern California and Alaska, while others are more closely aligned with such related concepts as the State of Jefferson, State of Trinity, State of Jackson, State of Klamath, State of Shasta and Pacifica.
Motivation
Political motivations for the secession and autonomy movements deal mostly with perceived shared Cascadian political culture, values, language dialect, history and interests, with which the eastern federal governments are accused of ignoring and being out of touch.
The region is already served by several cooperative organizations and interstate or international agencies, especially in forestry and fishery management and emergency preparedness – the whole region being prone to earthquakes (see Cascadia subduction zone). These organizations are thought by some to be precursors of a bioregional democracy, perhaps along the 'Republic' lines.
Pop culture
Two novels by Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981), are fictional portrayals of the secession of the region from the United States. Callenbach's novels include Washington, Oregon, and the northern half of California in the new country (with the dividing line between northern and southern California drawn roughly through Santa Barbara and Bakersfield). Seriatim was a short-lived magazine published in El Cerrito, California in the late 1970s which also promoted the secession of the region along the lines portrayed by Callenbach.
Trivia
- The Fish Brewing Company of Olympia, Washington puts, "Brewed in the Republic of Cascadia" on their organic ale.
- Unrelated to any of the other secessionist movements and regarded with near-universal hostility among residents of the Northwest was the Northwest Territorial Imperative, a secessionist proposal promoted by the Aryan Nations during the 1980s.
References
- Jeffersonian Democracy "free and independent empire" on the banks of the Columbia Retrieved 09 January 2007.
See also
External links
- Cascadian Independence Project - Homepage for the Cascadian Independence Project
- Republic of Cascadia homepage - This is a satirical Cascadian site
- The Cascadian Republic
- Legality of Secession
- Cascadia A wikiproject related to the bioregion and its culture.
- Cascadian English Cascadians discuss their own regional dialect. Included are articles detailing research into Cascadia's unique dialect, including details on Chinook Jargon, Cascadia's original trade language.
- AltaColumbia A comprehensive list of Cascadian autonomy and secessionist movements and groups.
- The Cascadian National Party proposed an independent state consisting of Washington and Oregon. CNP is now more or less defunct due to inactivity.
- The Cascadia Institute promotes consciousness of a bioregion extending along the coast from northern California up to northern British Coumbia and extending east into parts of Idaho and Alberta.