We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope

Steven Charleston

2024-06 · Tantor Media Inc · Skaito Jason Grasl

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From the moment European settlers reached these shores, the American apocalypse began. But Native Americans did not vanish. Apocalypse did not fully destroy them, and it doesn't have to destroy us. Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse-it's hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within. You'd be hard pressed to find an apocalypse more total than the one Native America has confronted for more than four hundred years. Yet Charleston's ancestors are a case study in the liberating and hopeful survival of a spiritual community. Charleston points to four Indigenous prophets who helped their people learn strategies for surviving catastrophe. Through gestures such as turning the culture upside down, finding a fixed place on which to stand, listening to what the earth is saying, and dancing a ghostly vision into being, these prophets helped their people survive. These ancestors' words reach across centuries to help us live through apocalypse today with courage and dignity.

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Steven Charleston is the theologian in residence at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. He has also served as the Episcopal bishop of Alaska, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, and professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary. He lives with his wife, Susan, in Oklahoma.

Jason Grasl is an actor, voice-over artist, playwright, and teacher. His TV/film credits include Rutherford Falls, 9-1-1, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Cassidy Red, Hot in Cleveland, White Collar, and Fallout: Nuka Break.