The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology

by Robert Bringhurst
Counterpoint, 2007
The Tree of Meaning presents thirteen superb and surprising lectures on language,  storytelling, mythology, comparative literature, humanity, and the breadth of oral and literate culture.
Bringhurst’s “ecological linguistics” includes studies of Native American art and illuminating essays about Haida culture, the process of translation, and the relationship between being and language. A companion [...]

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Perma Red: A Novel

By Debra Magpie Earling
Blue Hen Books (Penguin), 2003.
In this beautiful first novel, set on the Flathead Reservation of Montana in the 1940s, Earling traces the youth and young adulthood of Louise White Elk and the men who try to win her heart and soul. A red-headed, mixed-blood temptress, Louise always has a man or two, [...]

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Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

By Jonathan Lear
Harvard University Press, 2006.
Jonathan Lear, a psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy, delves into what he calls the ‘blind spot’ of any culture: the inability to conceive of its own devastation. He molds his thoughts around a poignant historical model, the decimated nation of Crow Indians in the early decades of the twentieth century. [...]

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