What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?

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.

Author: John Hausdoerffer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 05/28/2021
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780226777436


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/02/2021 pg. 1
Choice 04/01/2022

About the Author
John Hausdoerffer is dean of the School of Environment & Sustainability at Western Colorado University. Most recently, he is coeditor of Wildness: Relations of People and Place. For more information, visit www.jhausdoerffer.com. He lives in living in Gunnison, CO. Brooke Parry Hecht is president of the Center for Humans and Nature at www.humansandnature.org. 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.