National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the wake of colonization, in a landscape of loss and dispossession, can we rediscover ways to share the land with other creatures and one another? Towards a Prairie Atonement addresses this question by enlisting the help of a Métis Elder and revisiting the history of one corner of the Great Plains. Set on a prairie remnant seven thousand years old, this book's lyrical blend of personal narrative, prairie history, imagery, and argument begins with the cause of protecting native grassland on community pastures. As the narrative unfolds, however, Trevor Herriot, the award-winning author of Grass, Sky, Song and River in a Dry Land, finds himself recruited into the work of reconciliation. Facing his own responsibility as a descendent of settlers, he connects today's ecological disarray to colonial decisions to remove the Metis and their community land ethic from the prairie. With Indigenous and settler people alienated from one another and from the grassland itself, hope and courage are in short supply. This book proposes an atonement that could again bring people and prairie together.