A year ago a friend asked me to recommend a couple of books that would help him add Indigenous content to his reading. He thought I could probably come up with a couple.
I came up with a thread. That I organized by month around themes that seemed relevant to each month. And it got a lot of interest so I asked if people would be interested in a book club and they were oh my goodness they were. I quickly got over a hundred subscribers and really, if only a few showed up that’s still unmanageable for discussion so I decided to create panels and that’s what happened.
You can see the list of recommended reading on my website. Which I’ll probably migrate over to substack but migrating the podcasts has been a lot of work and my brain needs a break.
Every month a mix of authors and readers come together to talk about books. You can watch them all on twitch but they also come out in podcast format and until last month they came out as part of Medicine for the Resistance. I finally got my $@!^ together and thanks to substack’s podcasting capability Ambe now has it’s own separate stream. It’s on spotify and stitcher and apple and basically everywhere you get your podcasts now as well as right here on substack.
As new episodes get released you’ll get an email but if you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts they should automatically download, and if you’re new to Ambe or if you’ve fallen behind, you can catch up.
I’m working on transcripts.
The other exciting news is that it isn’t going to end in December. I’m hoping to continue in another format, maybe just talking with a couple of authors because as with the substack itself, what I am most interested in is what happens when I put two books together. The thoughts that happen.
So what’s coming up.
November 17 Ambe: Being Indigenous. Jesse Wente and Kyle T Hayes join previous panelists Sean Carson and Joy Henderson to talk about how we exist in the world as Indigenous people in all that global and diasporic reality.
December 21 Ambe: Indigenous Sovereignty. Daniel Heath Justice finishes the year he started along with Celeste Pedri-Spade and two others TBD. Sovereignty. It sounds so necessary and also inadquate. It’s a fraught word so we’re going to continue the conversation about being Indigenous with how we move politically.
And in the new year the first of the new format of conversations will be released. Dark Matters with Tyson Yunkaporta and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. The new format will not be livestreamed and will probably come out monthly. Maybe biweekly if I can keep myself organized.
Please stay in touch.
You can support this work by purchasing a paid subscription to the substack which will get you exerpts from my book and other works in progress.
Ambe!