What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?

"What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? challenges our relationship to the environment and to each other, not only now but across generations. It is an important question for our time, when communities have become fragmented by a global consumer society, when our selves have become isolated in a competitive and technology-driven economy, and when our spiritual, social, and ecological impacts on human and other-than-human beings extend farther than ever imagined due to globalization and climate change. Through interviews and poetic snapshots into the experience of Indigenous people and others, this book demands that the reader think about how contemporary concerns oblige us to see ourselves as someone's future ancestor and, in turn, creates for the reader a different way of looking at his or her traditions and self"--
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.