Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change
By Sherri Mitchell
Recommended by Jackie in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico:
“Native American attorney, teacher, activist and change-maker. Sherri Mitchell is the author of Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, and contributor to ALL WE CAN SAVE Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. She speaks about how Conquest Activism does not serve us. How much of our activism has been to topple one system and replace with another. This practice perpetuates the cycle of domination and does nothing to help us achieve our broader goal of creating unity within our movements. I try to abide by the 10:10:80 Rule, that she writes about in her book:
’We use 10% of our energy educating ourselves and learning about what are the problems, where the harm is coming from. A lot of these problems are being actively kept alive on life support. We need to let them die a natural death by withdrawing our support for their continued existence rather than annihilating them. 10% in stopping the flow of harm coming towards us, in the warrior tradition it means you stand in protection of life by stopping the flow of harm coming towards you without harm to other because it's a stand that recognizes the sacredness of all life. A full 80% of our energy is spent visioning and creating a world in which we wish to inhabit. So if we think about what we feed grows, we understand that basic construct, then we are feeding the world in which we want to inhabit and stop investing so much of our time and energy focusing on what we don't want to continue. One of the things that are critically important to realize is this growing tension we all are feeling is not that something is wrong, but that something is being righted within us.’”
From the Publisher:
Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our day—including indigenous land rights, environmental justice, and our collective human survival. Sharing the gifts she has received from the elders of her tribe, the Penobscot Nation, she asks us to look deeply into the illusions we have labeled as truth and which separate us from our higher mind and from one another.
Sacred Instructions explains how our traditional stories set the framework for our belief systems and urges us to decolonize our language and our stories. It reveals how the removal of women from our stories has impacted our thinking and disrupted the natural balance within our communities.
For all those who seek to create change, this book lays out an ancient world view and set of cultural values that provide a way of life that is balanced and humane, that can heal Mother Earth, and that will preserve our communities for future generations.