Book release: Our Indigenous Stories at New York
by Binalakshmi Nepram & Sam Simonds :: 9th October 2022

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Book release of 'Osman Thambal' at Imphal on 4th September 2022

Indigenous Stories from Around the World Offer Insight into Healing and Peace Needed in Today’s World

Indigenous myths, legends and religious texts from the seven socio-cultural regions of the world intimately explore cultural understandings, intergenerational knowledge flows, hope, healing and human relationships

There are 476 million Indigenous Peoples living in 90 countries and territories around the world. Indigenous stories, as they have been passed down from generation to generation, seldom find their way onto the bookshelf or in history books of ‘modern’ nation states around the world. 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 culture knowledges, while also offering insights into our shared humanity.

Our Indigenous Stories, edited by Binalakshmi 'Bina' 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. The book is published by The New York Universal Publishing House.

Binalakshmi Nepram is an Indigenous scholar currently a Fellow at Harvard University and a human rights defender from Manipur State in Northeast India bordering Burma. She co-founder of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace has authored and edited several books and is the recipient of the Anna Politskovskaya Award (2018), Women have Wings Award (2016), CNN IBN Real Heroes Award (2011), and the Sean MacBride Peace Prize (2010) among many others.

Sam Simonds is an award-winning filmmaker who has been working in Indigenous rights and advocacy for the last 5 years. The book, the first volume of a series is a vision of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace founded on 11 February 2019 to bring together Indigenous peoples and nations from all over the world.

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. In these 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.

This book of stories offers a global Indigenous community the opportunity to connect across similarities and differences between culture, lifeways, and storytelling practices. Our Indigenous Stories also offers non-Indigenous readers an opportunity to find themselves wandering through familiar lands guided by unfamiliar words.

Our Indigenous Stories is sponsored by the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace and is launched to mark the occasion of Indigenous Peoples Day commemorated on 9 & 10 October 2022 in Randal Island in New York City. The Global Alliance hopes that through the act of sharing stories, we may gain deeper insight into myriad practices of being in relationship with land, place, and community that is required for healing and peace in this world.

For any additional information, please contact
Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples,
Gender Justice and Peace.
Email : [email protected]
www.globalallianceofindigenouspeoples.com