As we face an ever-more-fragmented world, What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? demands a return to the force of lineage—to spiritual, social, and ecological connections across time. It sparks a myriad of ageless-yet-urgent questions: How will I be remembered? What traditions do I want to continue? What cycles do I want to break? What new systems do I want to initiate for those yet-to-be-born? How do we endure? Published in association with the Center for Humans and Nature and interweaving essays, interviews, and poetry, this book brings together a thoughtful community of Indigenous and other voices—including Linda Hogan, Wendell Berry, Winona LaDuke, Vandana Shiva, Robin Kimmerer, and Wes Jackson—to explore what we want to give to our descendants. It is an offering to teachers who have come before and to those who will follow, a tool for healing our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with our most powerful ancestors—the lands and waters that give and sustain all life.
ISBN-13: 9780226777436
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 05-28-2021
Pages: 248
Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
John Hausdoerffer is a fellow for the Center for Humans and Nature as well as dean of the School of Environment & Sustainability at Western State Colorado University. He is the author of Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature and editor of Aaron Abeyta’s Letters from the Headwaters. For more information, visit www.jhausdoerffer.com. He lives in Gunnison, CO.
Brooke Parry Hecht is president of the Center for Humans and Nature.
Melissa K. Nelson (Anishinaabe/Métis [Turtle Mountain Chippewa]) is professor of Indigenous sustainability at Arizona State University and president of the Cultural Conservancy, a Native-led Indigenous rights organization. Most recently, she is coeditor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability.
Katherine Kassouf Cummings serves as managing editor at the Center for Humans and Nature and leads Questions for a Resilient Future.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Poem: Unsigned Letter to a Human in the 21st Century
Jamaal May
I. Embedded: Our ancestral responsibility is deeply rooted in a multigenerational relationship to place.
a. Poem: Great Granddaddy
Taiyon Coleman
b. Essays:
i. Ancestor of Fire
Aaron A. Abeyta
ii. Grounded
Aubrey Streit Krug
iii. My Home / It’s Called the Darkest Wild
Sean Prentiss
c. Interview: Wendell Berry
Leah Bayens
d. Poem: To the Children of the 21st Century
Frances H. Kakugawa
II. Reckoning: Reckoning with ancestors causing and ancestors enduring historical trauma.
a. Poem: Forgiveness?
Shannon Gibney
b. Essays:
i. Sister’s Stories
Eryn Wise
ii. Of Land and Legacy
Lindsay Lunsford
iii. Cheddar Man
Brooke Williams
iv. Formidable
Kathleen Dean Moore
c. Interview: Caleen Sisk
Brooke Parry Hecht and Toby McLeod
d. Poem: Promises, Promises
Frances H. Kakugawa
III. Healing: Enhancing some ancestral cycles while breaking others.
a. Poem: To Future Kin
Brian Calvert
b. Essays:
i. Moving with the Rhythm of Life
Katherine Kassouf Cummings
ii. (A Korowai) For When You Are Lost
Manea Sweeney
iii. To Hope of Becoming Ancestors
Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Julianne Warren
c. Interview: Camille T. Dungy and Crystal Williams
d. Poem: Yes I Will
Frances H. Kakugawa
IV. Interwoven: Our descendants will know the kind of ancestor we are by reading the lands and waters where we lived.
a. Poem: Alive in This Century
Leora Gansworth
b. Essays:
i. What Is Your Rice?
John Hausdoerffer
ii. Restoring Indigenous Mindfulness within the Commons of Human Consciousness
Jack Loeffler
iii. Reading Records with Estella Leopold
Curt Meine
iv. How to Be Better Ancestors
Winona LaDuke
c. Interview: Wes Jackson
John Hausdoerffer and Julianne Lutz Warren
d. Poem: Omoiyare
Frances H. Kakugawa
V. Earthly: Other-than-human beings are our ancestors, too.
a. Poem: LEAF
Elizabeth Herron
b. Essays:
i. The City Bleeds Out (Reflections on Lake Michigan)
Gavin Van Horn
ii. I Want the Earth to Know Me as a Friend
Enrique Salmón
iii. The Apple Tree
Peter Forbes
iv. Humus
Catroina Sandilands
v. Building Good Soil
Robin Kimmerer
c. Interview: Vandana Shiva
John Hausdoerffer
d. Poem: Your Inheritance
Frances H. Kakugawa
VI. Seventh Fire
a. Poem: Time Traveler
Lyla June Johnston
b. Essays:
i. Seeds
Native Youth Guardians of the Waters 2017 Participants and Nicola Wagenberg
ii. Onëö’ (Word for Corn in Seneca)
Kaylena Bray
iii. Landing
Oscar Guttierez
iv. Regenerative
Melissa K. Nelson
v. Nourishing
Rowen White
vi. Light
Rachel Wolfgramm and Chellie Spiller
c. Interview: Ilarion Merculieff
Brooke Parry Hecht
d. Poem: Lost in the Milky Way
Linda Hogan
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Contributors
Index
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