Kingfisher's Song Memories Against Civilization

"Though we're used to thinking of civilization as the same as society and culture, it's not-it's an organization of power. As with any well-contrived political apparatus, civilization mimics good and useful things-humanity, culture, society-but that's not what it is. It is only power, a complex system built upon agriculture and human supremacy, which includes industrialism, currency exchanges, misogyny, and racism. It has produced the Salvationist religions-Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism-all major faiths apart from animism, the unorganized group of indigenous cosmologies usually described as 'primitive.' Civilization's conduct is dictated by a small minority, and though some of us benefit from this system and some do not, only those few are really able to decide what happens." -from the book In this memoir of unwavering love and focused rage, the author contemplates the reasons for environmental and social injustice in the origins of agriculture in Mesopotamia and the Dust Bowl disaster of the American Midwest, from the modern war waged on animals by the United States' Wildlife Services agency to the quiet wilderness fragments of northern California and southeast Utah. A new voice in a growing movement, Kingfisher's Song is a primer for decisive activism, an appeal for decency and compassion to break the institutions devouring human and biological communities, a call for honestly sustainable cultures and a worthwhile future.