Here are 100 books that Sacred Instructions fans have personally recommended if you like
Sacred Instructions.
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My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
This book blew me away. I loved how it was told with a range of characters and stories converging into a single whole—like the forest and the trees. I learned more about trees than I ever thought I would care to know and loved every minute of it.
There's nothing more humbling, perhaps, than the vast forests that blanket our planet, and this novel and its unforgettable characters made me feel that in my bones. I'll never look at a tree or planet Earth quite the same way again.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
Some years ago, my eyes were opened to the severity of our climate crisis and it changed me forever. Since that pivotal time, I’ve turned my therapeutic training and clinical experience toward addressing the existential threat of our time. I recognize how we must unmask our deep psychological biases, many of which unconsciously bring harm to our lives and social structures. I pair this with emotional resiliency practices for these deep and sustained efforts. As a Climate Psychology educator and consultant, I enjoy interdisciplinary strategies where I can contribute transformative methods that help us reclaim dormant human capacities that equip us to usher in a more just and safer world.
Ray is a colleague and an environmental studies professor at Humboldt State University. After witnessing firsthand the rising emotional distress in her students, she was compelled to respond with empathy and supportive resources. She began to recognize that teaching about climate impacts was not enough, and perhaps it even contributes to the problems if the emotional responses are not addressed in tandem. Written primarily with Gen Z in mind, I find the perspectives and resources are useful for anyone experiencing eco-anxiety, and she incorporates strong and insightful social justice perspectives.
Gen Z's first "existential toolkit" for combating eco-guilt and burnout while advocating for climate justice.
A youth movement is reenergizing global environmental activism. The "climate generation"-late millennials and iGen, or Generation Z-is demanding that policy makers and government leaders take immediate action to address the dire outcomes predicted by climate science. Those inheriting our planet's environmental problems expect to encounter challenges, but they may not have the skills to grapple with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that may arise when they confront this seemingly intractable situation.
Drawing on a decade of experience leading and teaching in college environmental studies…
Youth play such a significant role in the history of our struggles for justice–and yet most teenagers I meet in the classroom have limited access to these important stories. These stories are more relevant than ever as we see current youth-led activism for #BlackLivesMatter and Youth4Climate Marches. When I talk to youth about historical youth-led protests, their eyes light up–they make these connections lightning fast and say–why aren’t we being taught about things like this more in school?
This book, an anthology from women on the frontline of addressing Climate Change, is a must-read for our teams, including essays from a number of young women leading the charge, including Xiye Bastida Patrick and Alexandria Villaseñor. The book is remarkable in how clear-sighted each writer/storyteller is and how each essay rings with hope.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
“A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?”—The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they…
We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life?
Some years ago, my eyes were opened to the severity of our climate crisis and it changed me forever. Since that pivotal time, I’ve turned my therapeutic training and clinical experience toward addressing the existential threat of our time. I recognize how we must unmask our deep psychological biases, many of which unconsciously bring harm to our lives and social structures. I pair this with emotional resiliency practices for these deep and sustained efforts. As a Climate Psychology educator and consultant, I enjoy interdisciplinary strategies where I can contribute transformative methods that help us reclaim dormant human capacities that equip us to usher in a more just and safer world.
Okay, pour yourself a strong cup of coffee and get ready for an insightful dive under the hood of human consciousness with a psychoanalytic flashlight. This is not a quick read, but it is a valuable academic tome written by a woman with a brilliant mind. Lertzman is one of the earliest voices in climate psychology, and she continues to be a force in advancing the recognition of the strong role our emotions play in moving forward effectively with social change. Everyone in the field owes a debt of gratitude for the path she forged. She has personally inspired me, and if you are in this field professionally, or enjoy getting to know the perspectives of social influencers, you’ll want to include this in your personal library.
In this groundbreaking book, Renee Lertzman applies psychoanalytic theory and psychosocial research to the issue of public engagement and public apathy in response to chronic ecological threats. By highlighting unconscious and affective dimensions of contemporary ecological issues, Lertzman deconstructs the idea that there is a gap between what people care about and what is actually carried out in policy and personal practice. In doing so, she presents an innovative way to think about and design engagement practices and policy interventions.
Based on key qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted in Green Bay, Wisconsin, each chapter provides a psychosocial, psychoanalytic perspective…
I’m a Sibert Honor author and write books for kids and teens about nature. Part biography, part science adventure, my books introduce readers to real scientists and the unexpected twists and turns of their discoveries. The more I research the more I discover hidden connections to our natural world that humble me and fill me with gratitude. I do my best to share these connections with readers in an accurate, truthful way to help them find their own “ah-ha” moments in life. I want them to say, “I can do this, too!”
I love the simple elegance of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) Thanksgiving address because it considers nature a gift. The address, on which this book is based, is spoken before every ceremonial or governmental gathering of the Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora). Children greet the world with the address each morning. They thank the people, the waters, the grasses, the plants, the animals, the winds, the rain, the Sun, the Moon, and the stars of the night sky. What a perfect way to stay connected to Nature!
For as long as anyone can remember, Mohawk parents have taught their children to start each day by giving thanks to Mother Earth. Also known as the Thanksgiving Address, this good morning message is based on the belief that the natural world is a precious and rare gift. The whole universe - from the highest stars to the tiniest blade of grass - is addressed as one great family.
Now readers of all ages can share in this tribute to the environment, adapted especially for children by Chief Jake Swamp, whose efforts to share this vision of thanksgiving take him…
Though from different backgrounds, we share a profound passion for Native culture. As an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota, Gordon’s poetry and fiction draw deeply from his Anishinabe heritage and contribute to the current flowering of Indian writing. Ivy is the grandchild of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. As a scholar and teacher, she was appalled that Native writers are largely excluded from the American canon and worked to right that wrong. They met through their shared interest in Samson Occom, an 18th-century Mohegan writer, and decided to collaborate on increasing awareness of the necessity of Native writing to sustaining our future.
This account of early Native writing by a Wabanaki scholar has had a profound effect on our work as scholars, teachers, and writers. It recovers an archive that requires us to put Native literature at the center of a white-dominated literary history. Brooks’ brilliant argument connects Native language and history of the Northeast with its geography, a vast network of interconnected waterways that served as the basis for a sophisticated communal Native system of communication. Foundational to this system is the idea of “the common pot,” shared by all Algonquian-speaking peoples, that everyone and everything is related and interdependent for survival and flourishing. Including the invading Europeans, whose writing technologies Native peoples then absorbed and adapted.
Literary critics frequently portray early Native American writers either as individuals caught between two worlds or as subjects who, even as they defied the colonial world, struggled to exist within it. In striking counterpoint to these analyses, Lisa Brooks demonstrates the ways in which Native leaders-including Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and William Apess-adopted writing as a tool to reclaim rights and land in the Native networks of what is now the northeastern United States.
"The Common Pot," a metaphor that appears in Native writings during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, embodies land, community, and the shared space of…
What happens when a person is placed into a medically-induced coma?
The brain might be flatlining, but the mind is far from inactive: experiencing alternate lives rich in every detail that spans decades, visiting realms of stunning and majestic beauty, or plummeting to the very depths of Hell while defying…
I am Eric Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University, where I am on the faculty of The American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program and its former director. Because of my expertise in federal Indian law, I have been a consultant in certain legal matters involving Native issues. Some of the many books I teach and have written about are on my Shepherd list. My work is sustaining: writing and teaching about Native life and literature is a way of joining a crucial conversation about the survival of the planet through living a socially, politically, and economically balanced life.
This book of essays by the Seneca scholar and activist, John Mohawk, is vital because its title pinpoints what the center of my life and work is: focusing on Indigenous ways of thinking about the world as a vital and necessary alternative way of understanding the world to Western thought, which has brought us to the brink of climate collapse and has failed to solve, indeed has only increased, social and economic inequality.
I value the book, then, because it reminds me of the way to achieve real democracy.
These essays, produced and published over thirty years, are prescient in the prophetic tradition yet current. They reflect consistent engagement in Native issues and deliver a profoundly indigenous analysis of modern existence. Sovereignty, cultural roots and world view, land and treaty rights, globalization, spiritual formulations and fundamental human wisdom coalesce to provide a genuinely indigenous perspective on current events.
I fell in love with reading as a child and have carried that sense of magic and possibility with me ever since. As an adult and a writer, I believe passionately in the power of story to foster empathy, understanding, and greater human connection – and I still turn to children’s literature whenever I need reminding of all that we are capable of becoming and doing as human beings. This list has a strong environmental bent to it – partly because Wildoak is a book about caring for the natural world, and partly because I believe that stories shape our sense of purpose.
I originally read the adult version of this book and quite honestly, it’s a book I’ll never forget. It changed the way I think about the relationship between human beings and the earth. I absolutely loved it. And I was so excited when this young adult version came out, because it’s now so accessible to younger readers and I could share it with my teenage daughter. I love to read books alongside my kids and find ways to broaden and deepen our conversations about the natural world… and this one is top of my list for doing just that.
Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.
All my life, I’ve been aware that there are many layers to reality, many of which are human fabrications. Some are physical, like roads. Some are social, like healthcare. But the ones that control our lives the most, and that determine our global outcomes (poverty, war and ecological degradation for example), are ideological. The most powerful of these is our economic system. If we are to address the meta-crisis, I feel passionately that we need to be able to question and reimagine the economy. All the books I’ve chosen have been really important in helping me to think differently about things we usually take for granted.
I love this book because of how beautiful and hopeful it is. The author pulls together amazing stories from her life to gradually weave an understanding of the meta-crisis we find ourselves in. I was captivated by the way she contrasts her family’s indigenous American culture with our modern approaches to both science and the economy.
I love Robin’s prose, which is exquisitely written. But perhaps what I value the most is the fact that she writes with optimism, giving me the courage to get up every day and think about how to put her wisdom into practice.
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
I’ve known since I was 5 years old that my passion in life was helping people be all they came to this planet to be. I have been working with individuals, couples, businesses, and groups, and teaching courses for 54 years. Having had many years of my own psychotherapy, and 17 years into practicing traditional psychotherapy, I was not happy with the results, so I prayed for a teacher or a process that would really work. 38 years ago, I met Dr. Erika Chopich and we co-created the powerful Inner Bonding process, brought to us by our higher guidance, that rapidly heals on a very deep level, far beyond traditional psychotherapy.
Anita is a brilliant teacher of inclusion and diversity, and a fellow member of the Transformational Leadership Council. I couldn’t put her book down as she took me on her journey to claiming her personal power. The world needs this book now! Anita’s understanding of these four gifts and how important they currently are to our planet will deeply inspire you.
Heal your past, discover your true purpose, and become a powerful source of inspiration and leadership with The Four Sacred Gifts, a collection of Aztec and global indigenous wisdom for modern life.
Given the ongoing changes in our economic, social, political, and physical environment, we are often left gulping for air as we ride the powerful waves of change. Modern life overloads us with information yet lacks the true wisdom we seek. In this book, a group of global indigenous elders pass down their four most essential, agreed upon tools to help you fulfill your truest desire for meaning, wisdom,…
