The Story Is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis - Paperback

by Osprey Orielle Lake (Author), Casey Camp-Horinek (Foreword by)

It's time to rewild ourselves and our dominant worldviews to build Earth-centered communities for all

These pages summon from our bones our commitment to defend this living Earth.
--Joanna Macy, author, Coming Back to Life and Active Hope

This is a very valuable book. It delves deep into what we can and must learn from both Indigenous worldviews and the natural world that has helped inform them, and it does so without sentimentality or rancor; in so doing, it opens a number of paths for everyone trying to think more wisely about how we can inhabit a planet in fundamental crisis. It would best be read not as an intellectual exercise but as a guidebook to real change.
--Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature, founder, The Third Act

A magnificent book loaded with knowledge, wisdom, and...an empowering call for action.
--Nnimmo Bassey, author, To Cook a Continent, Right Livelihood Award winner

Incredibly important and timely...includes the memory and knowledge of how we can live in balance with nature.
--Helena Gualinga (Kichwa from Sarayaku, Ecuador), Indigenous youth climate leader

This extraordinary book offers a very potent recipe, spanning culture, global systemic change, sense-making, and remembrance of our Earth legacy.
--Nina Simons, co-founder, Bioneers

A majestic journey of sense-making. The resounding message throughout this book is to act with urgency and purpose in these times of interlocking crises.
--Sandrine Dixson-Decl钁e, co-president, The Club of Rome, co-author, Earth for All

The dominant cultural worldview is based upon extraction and exploitation practices that have brought us to the precipice of social, environmental, and climate collapse. Braiding poetic storytelling, climate justice analyses, and collective knowledge of Earth-centered cultures, The Story is in Our Bones opens a portal to restoration and justice beyond the end of a world in crisis.

Author, activist, and changemaker Osprey Orielle Lake weaves together ecological, mythical, political, and cultural understandings and shares her experiences working with global leaders, climate justice activists, Indigenous Peoples, and systems-thinkers. She seeks to summon a new way of being and thinking in the Anthropocene, which includes transforming the interlocking crises of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and ecocide, to build thriving Earth communities for all.

For anyone grieving our collective loss and wanting to take action, The Story is in Our Bones is a vital guide to remaking our world. This hopeful, engaging, and creatively lyrical work reminds readers that another world is possible, and provides a desperately needed antidote to the pervasive despair of our time.

Author Biography

Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), where she works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty. Osprey's writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in The Guardian, Common Dreams, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, and many other publications. She is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature. Osprey holds an MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.