Description: Will we choose life for our children and the future of our planet?
Everywhere we look, we see signs that all is not right with our earth: Extreme weather patterns wreak havoc. Pollutants sour soils and waterways. Fires and floods ravage land and communities. Climate change is just a symptom of a larger ecological crisis. If we want change, the solutions can't come through the same systems that created those problems.
Ecological justice requires us to challenge our assumptions about creation and our relationship to it. It requires decolonization. We must turn to the leadership of Indigenous communities who struggle for all life as land and water protectors, and we must call on people of faith to join them--to confront climate change and resource extraction and choose life for our children and the future of our planet. This book offers hope for a better future alongside concrete actions for joining with Indigenous Peoples to protect life and negotiate with decision-makers for sustainable change that follows Jesus.
Brief description: Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is cofounder and executive director of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition. She is also the cofounder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has worked in relationship with vulnerable Indigenous Peoples since 2005. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the World Health Organization, among others. She cohosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler and is the author of The Land Is Not Empty. She serves in a leadership role on multiple boards and commissions to enable vulnerable peoples in Washington State to speak for themselves in advocating for structural change. She and her husband Dan Peplow and their son live in the Yakima Valley of Washington.
Review Quotes: "Sarah Augustine and Sheri Hostetler's book crackles with truth-telling born of their love for the earth and its inhabitants. It is a book that demands reading and rereading--not simply because it is important (though it is) or challenging (though it is), but because its message slices through illusion and awakens imagination. Those willing to receive the Reality they name will find themselves transformed and inspired for the work to come."
--REV. AIMEE MOISO, PhD, associate director of the Louisville Institute and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA)