Becoming Kin

Okay, so this book, right? It's on the Lakota People's Law Project Decolonized Reading List for 2025. That's a pretty big deal. It's called "Becoming Kin," and it's by Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec.

Krawec's saying that the history we've been taught, the Western world's version, is falling apart. But here's the thing: we can still heal those broken connections. We can still honor the relationships between us. Settlers tried to take over and divide, but Indigenous peoples aren't just about sending them "home." It's more complex than that; it's about building a new future together.

Krawec weaves her own story with the stories of her ancestors, exploring themes of creation, replacement, and, yeah, disappearance. She helps us see settler colonialism through Indigenous eyes. It's a perspective we need to hear.

Settler colonialism tried to force everyone into one way of life, but the old ways of kinship—prioritizing community, respecting elders, and living in harmony with nature—can help us imagine something different. Krawec asks some powerful questions: What if we remembered we're all related? How could we be better relatives to the land, to each other, and Indigenous movements?

She braids together history, science, cultural analysis, Indigenous knowledge, and communal memory. It's a stunning and forceful call to "unforget" our history, to grapple with what's happened.

This book is a journey through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality. It helps us retrace our steps and pick up what we've lost: chances to honor treaties, to see the land as a relative, not just a resource, and to unravel the history we've been taught. Seriously, this is a book that could change the way you see history and your place within it. Give it a read.