Publishers Weekly
06/12/2023
In this perplexing hybrid of self-help and Native American history, Charleston (Ladder to the Light), a retired Episcopal bishop and citizen of the Choctaw Nation, responds to climate change, Covid-19, and other global crises by invoking the wisdom of Indigenous leaders whose communities struggled against white settlement. Drawing on the experiences of Ganiodaiio, a Seneca warrior and diplomat, who was known to white Americans as Cornplanter, Charleston urges readers to embrace individual accountability while simultaneously working for the common good. Following the ideas of Tenskwatawa, the “Shawnee Prophet,” he calls on readers to build communities based on mutual respect. The example of Nez Perce shaman Smohalla emphasizes the importance of treating the environment as a living being rather than a resource for humans, while that of the Paiute Ghost Dancer Wovoka urges people to overcome fear and hatred of their opponents and strive for reconciliation. Unfortunately, Charleston doesn’t offer specifics about how one might transform these sensible attitudes into strategies for individual and communal activism, and his historical research often comes up short, as when he describes early 19th-century Native Americans as having “a very libertarian existence.” Readers will be disappointed. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"A retired Episcopal bishop and citizen of the Choctaw Nation, responds to climate change, Covid-19, and other global crises by invoking the wisdom of Indigenous leaders whose communities struggled against white settlement." Publishers Weekly
"Steven Charleston's We Survived the End of the World is a poignant, deeply moving account of the many lessons the world can learn from Native American responses to the apocalypse of settler colonialism. These lessons are ever more urgently necessary now that the entire planet faces the predicament of the Indigenous peoples whose worlds were destroyed by maelstroms of avarice and aggression." Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement
"Steven Charleston's voice is strong, clear, poetic, and possessed by great urgency. With this graceful and insightful weaving of history and activism, he reveals to his readers a reconfigured past, as well as the possibility of a brighter future if we can reclaim forgotten values and suppressed wisdom." Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
"'The politics of fear drives us into bunkers.' In this reflection on the prophets and prophecies of Indigenous peoples, Steven Charleston invites us to imagine another way forward, invites us to emerge from these bunkers and face the uncertainties of apocalypse in communities built on relationship to each other and the other-than-human world around us." Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin