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Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future

Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future

by Stonechild, Blair A
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780889779846 University of Regina Press

Rediscovering, valuing, and embracing Indigenous spirituality and wisdom is critical for humanity to survive in the future.

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.

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Product details

BrandUniversity of Regina Press
Pub dateJan 27, 2024
ISBN-100889779848
ISBN-139780889779846
Hardcover184.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions9.1 × 0.8 × 6.1 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2025-06-27 22:46
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