Join us for a T’Sou-ke Truth 4 Reconciliation book club discussion. We will be reading and discussing Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future by Blair Stonechild.
Civilization is a western, Eurocentric construct borne from a distrust of nature, a desire to endlessly exploit it and profit from it. Despite being a relatively recent development, civilization’s inherent logic has resulted in over-population, inequality, poverty, misery, war, and climate change and now threatens humanity’s very survival. How can humanity expect to survive if it continues to look for solutions from the very structures and ideologies that have brought it to the brink of extinction?
In this final book of his trilogy, Dr. Blair Stonechild deftly illustrates how Indigenous spirituality, wisdom, and land-based knowledge is critical to human survival in the face of environmental destruction and human-induced climate change. Reinterpreting world history from an Indigenous perspective, Stonechild’s solution to this unfolding catastrophe is “ecolization,” a state in which humans recognize they are not the central purpose of creation and a way of existing harmoniously with the natural and spiritual worlds.
Beautifully written, urgent, and critical, Challenge to Civilization reminds us that it is not Earth that is in danger of extinction, but ourselves, and Indigenous spiritual wisdom can be the guiding light through what will otherwise be humanity’s final, ever-darkening days. existence, Sufferance is a bold and provocative novel about the social and political consequences of the inequality created by privilege and power–and what we might do about it.
We will be meeting in person at the Sooke library in our Multipurpose Room. Please register using the button below (include your email address as we will send information to you via email) OR by emailing April at aripley@virl.bc.ca.
Copies of the book are available to place on hold in VIRL’s catalogue.