Sacred Migration

It's time for a spiritual migration, says Choctaw elder Steven Charleston. Two million years ago, our earliest ancestors undertook the first migration. Now, in a time of upheaval and chaos and dread, we must move again.

Around us, things are shutting down. Disappearing. We are moving backward in our evolution. Brutality and passivity, greed and xenophobia reign. Tools and technology will not save us. While our ancestors knew their survival depended on our relationship to Mother Earth, we act as if the Earth were a resource to be exploited rather than a relative to love.

But across Turtle Island, Indigenous people are inviting others to join them on a sacred migration. It's a journey rooted in perception, imagination, humility, and kindness. In these pages, the beloved author of Ladder to the Light and other books, Steven Charleston, draws on Native spirituality to show us the way. Charleston is not content to let the Trail of Tears define the history of his community. With his trademark mix of gentle warmth and piercing vision, he offers the story of another kind of migration, one that arises from the deepest parts of ancient human culture. In Sacred Migration, Charleston shows us how his ancestors understood migration as a spiritual journey. He reveals holy places, like kivas and mounds and the medicine wheel, and points us toward the hope that will orient us. And he shows us how to create an altar to sustain us. This journey is life-giving and restorative, and it's one we take together.

Migration is a process by which people not only travel but transform, Charleston says. We do not need to sit still in our despair, and in the pages of this much-anticipated book, he invites us to travel, together, toward a new home.