MUCH-NEEDED RECALIBRATION

RIGHT STORY, WRONG STORY: How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell

- ROCHELLE BOURGAULT

ROCHELLE BOURGAULT is a writer, editor, and book coach specializing in wellness and spirituality. She loves nature, building community, ashtanga yoga, and parenting her young children. Visit rochellebourgault.com.

Tyson Yunkaporta HarperOne, February 2025

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal (Apalech clan) scholar whose writing defies category; his Right Story, Wrong Story is a whitewater paddle into ecology, ethics, Indigenous culture, and a takedown of Western philosophy. Overlook his message at our collective peril.

The “right story” is about improving relationships, restoring habitats, halting the destruction of life, and legal pluralism. And the “wrong story” is what we've been doing: upholding capitalism, monotheism, and patriarchy. Correcting our trajectory is the ultimate, necessary paradigm shift.

Throughout the book, we hear Yunkaporta's plea for ethical recalibration to “stabilize a global system that has exceeded its physical limits.” His alarm is apolitical, yet his solutions are earthy: We have not yet lost access to Indigenous ways ... we've just ignored them.

Right Story, Wrong Story is a fiercer cousin to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. This provocative book shows us so many places where our modern agreements defy natural law. We need not just relearn old ways, we need to unearth them, literally: rewild, reclaim, pull them from the wells. They are in our bones, our lore, our DNA. We can do this.

THE GRIEVING BODY:

How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing