Our Indigenous Stories: Stories from the Seven Socio-Cultural Zones of the World

Our Indigenous Stories, edited by Binalakshmi Nepram and Sam Simonds, brings together Indigenous stories from the seven socio-cultural zones of the world: Africa; Arctic Regions; Asia; Central and Eastern Europe, Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia; North America; Central and South America and the Caribbean; and the Pacific Islands.

Indigenous stories, as they have been passed down from generation to generation, seldom find their way onto the bookshelf. For Indigenous peoples, stories from their own culture, let alone other Indigenous cultures, can often feel distant and inaccessible. Yet these stories shed light on important land and cultural knowledges, while also offering insights into our own humanity.

Every culture holds their own traditions of storytelling as a means to express cultural and scientific understandings, often intimately tied to people and place. Many of the stories represented in Our Indigenous Stories deal with spirits of non-human kin, spirits who engage with humans in a variety of ways. Others deal with morality and lessons of character. Often times, non-human beings who are given agency represent a specific meaning of significance to the storyteller. While reading Our Indigenous Stories, one may find themselves in a world which is extraordinary, a world which is animate. The relationships explored throughout different stories highlight the multitude of vivid, precise, and intentional ways the world communicates with humans.

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