Jamail, Dahr and Stan Rushworth (editors). We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth. The New Press, 2022.
Editors and interviewers Jamail and Rushworth have constructed this book so that each chapter feels like an intimate visit with the interviewee, as if seated in a physical room with them. The structure of the book thus demonstrates what poet Natalie Diaz describes as the physical power of language in her chapter.
Another chapter that highlights the collection’s core questions and themes is the interview with Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte on the subject of kinship and the morality of conceptualizing time. In response to the ‘clock time’ of colonial capitalism that urges us to panic about the ‘unprecedented’ upheaval we are currently experiencing, Whyte suggests shifting to Indigenous conceptions of deep time, kinship time, or seasonal time, all of which encourage us to see ourselves as relatives connected in a web that stretches endlessly into the past and future. This viewpoint is echoed in other interviews, in the editors’ introduction, and in the book’s titular quotation from John Trudell.
No doubt each reader will connect with different chapters, as the book is designed to prompt reader participation and self-reflection. The collection of interviews concludes with a series of discussion questions crafted by the editors, further soliciting the reader’s response to the crucial concepts discussed throughout the book. For anyone seeking spiritual grounding and practical guidance for navigating our changing climate in life-affirming ways, We Are the Middle of Forever will be a welcome companion.
Bees Birthed by Bugonia 