Learning Native Wisdom

"Holthaus offers a powerful case that we have ruptured the intimate bond between the health of humankind and the natural world, and that reconnecting the two may be one of our last chances for a viable future."—Garrit Voggesser, Garrit Voggesser

"Learning Native Wisdom teaches that we are all 'native' to the earth. This wisdom is not exotic, primitive, or 'other' but is embedded in the ancient, practical daily lifeways passed down for millennia by all our ancestors—functional, sustainable (ethical), and broadly spiritual. Developed world societies are also subsistence cultures, at the moment locked into hunting and gathering the shirinking resource oil. With wisdom comes gratitude, manners, and care for creation. Holthaus quotes a farmer friend who says. 'No use talking about sustainable agriculture if you don't have a sustainable culture.' This book is just what we need. It is deeply informed by Gary Holthaus's many years of teaching and working in the Alaskan bush."—Gary Snyder, Gary Snyder

"Gary Holthaus shows us with infinite care how our desire for sustainability in many dimensions—agriculture, environment, economy, to name a few—can never be achieved without the support of a sustainable culture. Drawing on age-old wisdom, he argues that subsistence, sustainability, and spirituality must go hand in hand if we are to make our lives and our world healthy and whole. Without romanticizing traditional cultures, he uses their experiences to demonstrate that we humans at one time lived in this world in more sustainable ways and that, knowing this, we have the possibility to do so again."—David D. Chrislip, David D. Chrislip

"Holthaus illuminates the sharp distinctions between the long-term view taken by Native peoples regarding the connection between nature and humans, and the 'immediate return' goals of the U.S. economy, exemplified by our 'frantic hunt for the last barrel of oil.'"—Deborah Donovan, Booklist

"Holthaus's collection of essays is a pleasant immersion in the environmental philosophy of Native American (mainly Alaskan, in this case) ways of life and belief that contrast so vividly with the consumerist culture that permeates today's world."—Choice

"This is story-telling as learned from [Holthaus's] Indian and Eskimo friends and mentors in Alaska, with a brilliance that is refreshing because it is rooted in experience. Anyone interested in sustainability will find this book engaging and different."—Craig Gerlach, Agricultural History

"For Holthaus, the 'spiritual task' is to learn to love the universe, including all the creation and the destruction, the health and the disease. Holthaus does a wonderful job of communicating this task throughout Learning Native Wisdom, as he describes how engagements in the continual effort of creating a sustainable culture require that humans learn to tell each other stories, learn to love the universe, learn to practice self-cultivation, and learn to participate in the relationship and reciprocity that entwine humans and the natural world."—Worldviews: Environment Culture Religion

"[Holthaus] challenges [readers] to be mindful of their words, to shape them according to a larger vision of the sorts of persons they wish to be."—Agricultural Environment Ethics

"With the foundational stories of many spiritual belief systems and the work of certain spiritual leaders, Holthaus assesses how traditional and non-traditional spiritual belief systems might exist in contemporary culture." —Hilary B. Booker, Department of Environmental Studies, Antioch University