Sacred Instructions

A “profound and inspiring” collection of Indigenous wisdom for “anyone wanting the healing of self, society, and of our shared planet” (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma). Penobscot leader, lawyer, and activist Sherri Mitchell offers enduring lessons rooted in powerful First Nations cosmologies and timeless universal insights. She speaks directly into the crises of our time—environmental injustice, colonial extraction, and profound disconnection—with teachings and tools for embodying sacred and reciprocal ways of life. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Mitchell explores the most crucial issues of our day: • Indigenous land rights • Environmental justice • Our collective human survival • The immense harms of patriarchy • How we build, and learn from, meaningful community • Wisdom and insights for restoring what's been lost, for the sake of us all and the more-than-human world Sacred Instructions explains how our traditional stories frame our belief systems. It 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. And, with gifts and insights received from the elders of the Penobscot Nation, it asks us to look deeply into the illusions we've accepted as truth—but which separate us from our higher minds, each other, and the earth.