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.

This book "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"--

Discover the Spiritual Nourishment and Magical Power of Ancestor Veneration Learn how to connect to your ancestors and receive the benefits that come from veneration—deeper spirituality, more love in your life, better outcomes in creative pursuits, powerful magic and spellwork, and an improved sense of wellness. Filled with hands-on techniques and tips, Honoring Your Ancestors shows you how to create an ancestor altar so you can work with ancestors of all kinds. Author Mallorie Vaudoise also shares fascinating ideas for incorporating rituals, spells, family recipes, and even practices like music and dancing to help you open this wonderful new dimension of your spiritual journey. Ancestor veneration is one of the most widespread spiritual practices in the world. This book shares the important distinctions between working with blood ancestors, lineage ancestors, and affinity ancestors while helping you recognize the signs that your ancestors are responding to your petitions and offerings. You will also explore important topics like mediumship and ancestral trauma so you can be sure to develop a veneration practice that's uplifting and affirming for you.

“Extraordinary and wide-ranging . . . a literary feat that simultaneously builds and excavates identity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club Pick • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize • An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her complicated Southern family—and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves—in this “brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation” (The Boston Globe). ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Esquire, Garden & Gun Maud Newton’s ancestors have fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father was said to have married thirteen times. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Newton’s family inspired in her a desire to understand family patterns: what we are destined to replicate and what we can leave behind. She set out to research her genealogy—her grandfather’s marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors’ roles in slavery and other harms. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity’s dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them. Searching and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to make peace with the secrets and contradictions of her family's past and face its reverberations in the present, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

Now in paperback: A call to save ourselves and our planet that gets to the root of the current crisis—society’s extreme short-sightedness

An Excerpt from When Descendants Become Ancestors "Congratulationsyoure going to be an ancestor (someday). You cannot escape it. Nor can I. Nor can anyone else. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your beliefs about an afterlife, but each body ultimately ceases to exist. We all know that. From the moment of birth, each of us begins a journey that must ultimately conclude with our entrance into ancestry. As we research our own ancestors and mourn the lack of information available to us, we forget that we are the future ancestors of our descendants. And if we dont leave to them the kinds of information about our lives that we crave to know about our own forefathers, then we are merely perpetuating the problem." How often have you regretted your failure to engage the elder generations of your family for information about their lives and memories? How many times have you wanted just one more hour with a deceased relative who could answer that one burning question that you suddenly thought about, and that no one else can answer? Perhaps you remember a time when an older acquaintance wanted to share with you some stories about the good old days, but you couldnt be bothered. Most of us have had regrets like these, as will our descendantsunless we seek to record and preserve some stories for their use. Whether our stories are short and simple or long and complex matters not, but these stories will become part of their heritage and can certainly influence their lives. Though our contributions may not be recognized for decades, our lives matter to future generations and our stories should be told. The rest is up to each of us.

The first book to probe the conflicted attitudes that shaped and constrained noted painter George Catlin, famous for his 19th century paintings of vanishing Native American culture. Forces readers to rethink their understanding of the artist--despite his advocacy for Native peoples.

A renowned biologist provides a sweeping chronicle of more than four billion years of life on Earth, shedding new light on evolutionary theory and history, sexual selection, speciation, extinction, and genetics.

In this easy-to-use reference guide, family historian Grace DuMelle provides the means to trace Chicago connections like a pro. She shows not just what to research, but how to research. Without wading through preliminaries, readers choose any of the self-contained chapters that focus on the questions beginners most want answered. Other chapters cover the nuts and bolts of the mechanics that are the key to making a family's past come alive, with highlights summarizing important points. In finding Chicago ancestors, readers will better understand not only their family's history, but also their involvement in the history of a great American city. Midwest Independent Publishers Association Book Award - 1st Place - Hobby/How- To Illinois Woman's Press Association Book Award - 1st Place - Instructional Nonfiction National Federation of Press Women Book Award - 3rd Place - Instructional Nonfiction The Chicago Roots of Your Family Tree For almost 175 years, a great metropolis on the shores of a freshwater sea has sent a siren call to immigrants internal and external, giving most Americans some kind of link to the City of Big Shoulders. Whether your people came west from New England in the early days of settlement, or north from Mississippi in the Great Migration; whether they sailed from Sweden and Sicily, or flew from Budapest and Prague; whether they settled here permanently or temporarily, this easy-to-use reference guide will help you document them. Family historian Grace DuMelle provides the means to trace your Chicago connections like a pro. She shows you not just what to research, but how to research. Without wading through lots of preliminaries, choose any of the self-contained chapters that focus on the questions beginners most want answered and jump right in! Where do I start? When and where was my ancestor born? When did my ancestor come to America? What did my ancestor do for a living? Where did my ancestor live? Where is my ancestor buried? Other chapters cover the nuts and bolts of the mechanics that are the key to making your family's past come alive, with highlights summarizing important points: Examples of documents such as death certificates, church registers and U.S. census entries. Chicago-area research facilities: what they have and how to access it. Researching using newspapers, machines and catalogs. Sources for specific ethnic research. Sources for long-distance research. In finding your Chicago ancestors, you will not only better understand your and your family's history, but also your and your family's involvement in the history of a great American city.