We Belong To The Land

We Belong to the Land, the gripping autobiography of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Elias Chacour, capture his life's work toward peace and reconciliation for Israeli Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, world-renowned Palestinian priest, Elias Chacour, narrates the gripping story of his life spent working to achieve peace and reconciliation among Israeli Jews, Christians, and Muslims. From the destruction of his boyhood village and his work as a priest in Galilee to his efforts to build school, libraries, and summer camps for children of all religions, this peacemaker’s moving story brings hope to one of the most complex struggles of our time.

This book illustrates the ways in which the personal is political in the advancement of decolonising scholarship. It explores the intimacies of coloniality entrenched in the narcissism of coloniality, enabling the system through extraction, subjugation and violence. Pushing back against the narcissism of coloniality, which is framed by the ma/ster/slave dialectic or internalised oppression, requires uhuru and ubuntu which are agentic strategies employed in reclaiming ontology and epistemology. Uhuru insists on a decolonisation of self; whereas ubuntu is determined by African radical communitarianism, demanding new ways of knowing and seeing whilst re-examining epistemicides of the enslaved, indentured and colonised. Fanonian theory is used as a framework for understanding the colonial authoritys management of the colonised, determining the unhappiness quintessential in the colonial condition. Freirian concepts of conscientisation and criticality are used as a form of resistance, disrupting the system of racial capitalism and the coloniality of gender. Subsequently, flipping the classroom to resist the coloniality of knowledge allows scholars to connect with community, encouraging engaged scholarship from the personal/political perspective, making the classroom a radical space for addressing trauma and healing whilst bridging art, activism and scholarship. Therefore, the classroom is situated against the blind spots of the banking model with male dominated decolonial work silencing the feminist perspective. Consequently, uhuru and ubuntu promote voice, agency and resistance as a pedagogical praxis paramount for the development of a decolonial feminist pedagogy.

An examination of the lingering effects of a hydroelectric power station on Pimicikamak sovereign territory in Manitoba, Canada. The child of South Asian migrants, Kazim Ali was born in London, lived as a child in the cities and small towns of Manitoba, and made a life in the United States. As a man passing through disparate homes, he has never felt he belonged to a place. And yet, one day, the celebrated poet and essayist finds himself thinking of the boreal forests and lush waterways of Jenpeg, a community thrown up around the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River, where he once lived for several years as a child. Does the town still exist, he wonders? Is the dam still operational? When Ali goes searching, however, he finds not news of Jenpeg, but of the local Pimicikamak community. Facing environmental destruction and broken promises from the Canadian government, they have evicted Manitoba’s electric utility from the dam on Cross Lake. In a place where water is an integral part of social and cultural life, the community demands accountability for the harm that the utility has caused. Troubled, Ali returns north, looking to understand his place in this story and eager to listen. Over the course of a week, he participates in community life, speaks with Elders and community members, and learns about the politics of the dam from Chief Cathy Merrick. He drinks tea with activists, eats corned beef hash with the Chief, and learns about the history of the dam, built on land that was never ceded, and Jenpeg, a town that now exists mostly in his memory. In building relationships with his former neighbors, Ali explores questions of land and power?and in remembering a lost connection to this place, finally finds a home he might belong to. Praise for Northern Light An Outside Magazine Favorite Book of 2021 A Book Riot Best Book of 2021 A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2021 “Ali’s gift as a writer is the way he is able to present his story in a way that brings attention to the myriad issues facing Indigenous communities, from oil pipelines in the Dakotas to border walls running through Kumeyaay land.” —San Diego Union-Tribune “A world traveler, not always by choice, ponders the meaning and location of home. . . . A graceful, elegant account even when reporting on the hard truths of a little-known corner of the world.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Ali’s] experiences are relayed in sensitive, crystalline prose, documenting how Cross Lake residents are working to reinvent their town and rebuild their traditional beliefs, language, and relationships with the natural world. . . . Though these topics are complex, they are untangled in an elegant manner.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“The most we can hope for is that we are paraphrased correctly.” In this statement, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias underscores one of the main issues in the representation of Aboriginal peoples by non-Aboriginals. Non-Aboriginal people often fail to understand the sheer diversity, multiplicity, and shifting identities of Aboriginal people. As a result, Aboriginal people are often taken out of their own contexts. Walking a Tightrope plays an important role in the dynamic historical process of ongoing change in the representation of Aboriginal peoples. It locates and examines the multiplicity and distinctiveness of Aboriginal voices and their representations, both as they portray themselves and as others have characterized them. In addition to exploring perspectives and approaches to the representation of Aboriginal peoples, it also looks at Native notions of time (history), land, cultures, identities, and literacies. Until these are understood by non-Aboriginals, Aboriginal people will continue to be misrepresented—both as individuals and as groups. By acknowledging the complex and unique legal and historical status of Aboriginal peoples, we can begin to understand the culture of Native peoples in North America. Until then, given the strength of stereotypes, Native people have come to expect no better representation than a paraphrase.

Belonging to the Earth is a collection of personal insights, stories of journeys and rituals, community events and conversations between activists, First Nations community leaders, and those practicing nature spirituality. Each part of the book offers thoughtful and personal perspectives about connecting with the land, paying respect to ancestral traditions, Indigenous cultures and First Nations people, and finding ways to practice nature spirituality with integrity. Each part of the journey of the book explores how we can all come together to work for a better future and develop a greater understanding of how we belong to the Earth.

One of the most persistent, if vexing, issues facing not just theology but also political theory, sociology, and other disciplines, is the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For theology, the problem is especially nettlesome on account of the church s shared history and tradition with Israel. Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, bear the brunt of suffering and dispossession in the current situation, yet are burdened even more by Christian political appropriation of Zionism. Through an analysis of Palestinian refugee mapping practices for returning to their homeland, Alain Epp Weaver takes up the troubled issue of Palestinian dispossession and argues against the political theology embedded in Zionist cartographic practices that refuse and seek to eliminate evidence of co-existence. Instead, Alain Epp Weaver offers a political theology of redrawing the territory compatible with a bi-national vision for a shared Palestinian-Israeli future.

Broadway musicals are one of America’s most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation? Now in a new second edition, The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to Hamilton (2015). This revised edition includes a new introduction and conclusion, updated chapters, as well as a brand-new chapter that looks at the blockbuster musicals The Book of Mormon and Hamilton. Musicals mirror their time periods and reflect the political and social issues of their day. Warren Hoffman investigates the thematic content of the Broadway musical and considers how musicals work on a structural level, allowing them to simultaneously present and hide their racial agendas in plain view of their audiences. While the musical is informed by the cultural contributions of African Americans and Jewish immigrants, Hoffman argues that ultimately the history of the American musical is the history of white identity in the United States. Presented chronologically, The Great White Way shows how perceptions of race altered over time and how musicals dealt with those changes. Hoffman focuses first on shows leading up to and comprising the Golden Age of Broadway (1927–1960s), then turns his attention to the revivals and nostalgic vehicles that defined the final quarter of the twentieth century. He offers entirely new and surprising takes on shows from the American musical canon—Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), The Music Man (1957), West Side Story (1957), A Chorus Line (1975), and 42nd Street (1980), among others. In addition to a new chapter on Hamilton and The Book of Mormon, this revised edition brings The Great White Way fully into the twenty-first century with an examination of jukebox musicals and the role of off-Broadway and regional theaters in the development of the American musical. New archival research on the creators who produced and wrote these shows, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Kleban, will have theater fans and scholars rethinking forever how they view this popular American entertainment.