Skylight Books Podcast Series

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.

Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.

Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed—and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.

 

Join us for a conversation between Smithers and Raven E. Heavy Runner, who wrote the foreword for the book.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey is the lyrical, unforgettable memoir of Bett Williams's relationship with psilocybin mushrooms, otherwise known as magic mushrooms. In pursuit of self-healing, she begins experimenting with mushrooms in solitary ceremonies by the fire. Word soon gets out about her New Mexican desert mushroom farm, though, and people arrive in droves. Not long after, the police read her her Miranda Rights, her relationships fall out of whack, and her dog Rosie just might be CIA.

On a quest to find help through the psychedelic community, Bett is led to Cleveland to meet Kai Wingo, an African American leader within a high-dose psilocybin community, and to Huautla de Jim nez, home of well-known, well-respected curandera Mar a Sabina. Back home, Bett begins a solid ritual practice with the help of her partner and friends, bearing in mind the medicine's indigenous roots and power to transform one's life.

Amidst the mainstream flood of New Age practices and products, The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey is a dreamlike reminder that psilocybin mushrooms are a medicine of the people, not to be neatly packaged, marketed, or appropriated.

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Williams is in conversation with author, poet, and arts organizer Michelle Tea

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

This isn’t your great-great-great-great grandmother’s guide to witchcraft. Inner Witch: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Craft, by Nylon’s Ask A Witch columnist Gabriela Herstik, invites everyone into the coven, modernizing the ancient craft and creating a space for all to come and express their sacred self.

As uncertainty rages across the globe, many have a turned to the sacred, ancient crafts—witchcraft, astrology, crystals, and similar practices—to find balance, especially young women. Inner Witch grants practitioners from all walks of the life the freedom to assume their place in the universe while connecting with a force far greater than themselves.