Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge
Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger have teamed up once again for a new book focused on Indigenous people. Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Ingigenous Knowledge is an incredible middle grade non fiction book all about the ways we can learn and benefit from Indigenous wisdom.
Sky Wolf’s Call is broken into eight different chapters focusing on how the knowledge of Indigenous peoples has been supporting the earth for thousands of years and how we need that knowledge more than ever as we face the current climate crisis. Eldon Yellowhorn and Kathy Lowinger share knowledge of water, fire, sky, healing and food security. The information is broad, providing readers with knowledge not just from the Blackfoot tradition but from many other nations and tribes across Turtle Island.
Readers are reminded throughout of how colonialism tried to squash this knowledge and how this precious knowledge is vital at this time in our history. We can all learn by looking at Indigenous ways of protecting the water, of managing forests, honouring the animals that provide us with food and ensuring those animals continue to thrive.
Throughout the book, Eldon Yellowhorn shares traditional stories from the Blackfoot people. He shares these stories as they are part of his Piikani heritage and they help to shape our understanding of the knowledge he imparts throughout the book.
It’s very engaging to read. There are a lot of great side bars as well as profiles of people who have done and are doing the work to meld Indigenous knowledge and western science. Readers learn of those who continue fighting for the rights of their people and to remind us all of the precious resource we have in Mother Earth. There are many photographs. I love that this book contains photos and not illustrations. Photos show readers the people and the natural world that are directly impacted by the knowledge shared throughout. The photos remind us that there are actual people performing this important work all the time, not some abstract idea of people.
The information in the story is incredibly thought provoking and really begs the question: What if? What if this knowledge was allowed to flourish instead of being silenced. Since we can’t go back and change the past, all we can do is go forward in a better way. One that values the knowledge and the contributions to protecting our world that can be found in the hand of those who were here from the beginning.
Sky Wolf’s Call: The Gift of Indigenous Knowledge is truly a gift. It’s a book that I would hope will find it’s way to classrooms and libraries across Turtle Island. We need this gift, this knowledge now more than ever.
