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Harmony and Balance
Feathers of Wisdom is a collection of forty-four legends, myths, and historical portraits of Indigenous women from various nations and traditions. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I have had the privilege of interviewing two remarkable women, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross, and Cahuilla elder and healer, Dr. Katherine Siva Sauble, for plays I was writing for the festival Celebrate Women. Working with Indigenous artist and illustrator Kait Mathhews, we created Flowerwise: Oracle Deck and Guidebook. As we tossed about ideas for our next effort, Kait suggested the tales and legends of Indigenous women. I knew immediately this was the work we should do. We live in very frightening and threatening times. To move forward, we need to look back. The voices of women have been progressively silenced, including Indigenous women. Within the stories these women tell is the necessity of living in harmony and balance with everything on our Earth. This is a philosophy we must return to if we as a species, if our small blue beautiful world is to survive.
How did you decide which stories and figures to include among such a vast range of possibilities?
We started first with the choosing of the tribes and the women who represented those tribes. There are several Native cultures, Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, for example, that are well known and abundant research is available. There were several others that required deeper digging. Once the tribe was found, the research for the stories began. A few of our original choices had to be set aside, either for lack of historical references or for lack of the types of stories we wanted to tell. One very disturbing incident was the discovery that one of the stories we very much liked was a complete fabrication. The whole thing had to be tossed.
We wanted to tell the stories of the women. Who were they? What were the tasks? What did they believe? Who and how did they love? What did they eat? I’m one of those people who can get lost in research. I loved casting my wide net to find the perfect story.
How do you see storytelling functioning as a form of cultural survival?
All the stories presented in Feathers of Wisdom have been passed down through the generations in the oral tradition. Storytelling achieves many ends: warnings, food preparation, and the retelling of the Creation Story. Stories are history. They tell who we are, where we come from. They reunite, reacquaint the present with the past, the rituals practiced long ago with the ceremonies practiced today. Stories hold the original culture deep within their mysteries, legends, and myths, whispering on the wind who, what, where, and why.
If readers take away one lasting idea from Feathers of Wisdom, what would you want it to be?
Live a life in harmony and balance. Everything upon the earth is sacred. We Are All One.
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Crafted with museum-quality design and artistry, Feathers of Wisdom is a collector’s volume that transforms the ancient legends of Indigenous women into a visual and literary masterpiece.
Across more than forty legends from tribes throughout the Americas, this stunning hardcover volume brings to life the voices of goddesses, warriors, healers, and mothers-figures whose wisdom shaped their cultures and whose stories continue to echo through generations. Author Leigh Podgorski’s lyrical prose preserves these narratives with deep reverence, while artist Kait Matthews, a proud Ojibwe/Potawatomi woman, illuminates each tale with lush, museum-quality illustrations that honor the spiritual power and beauty of Indigenous storytelling.
Printed on premium stock in full color, Feathers of Wisdom is designed as both a work of cultural preservation and a collector’s art book. Each page is an offering-pairing timeless myth and contemporary artistry to create a reading experience that feels sacred, immersive, and alive.
This extraordinary edition invites readers to reflect on the enduring strength of the divine feminine and to reconnect with the earth, the ancestors, and the stories that remind us: We are all one.
Highlights include:
Forty richly illustrated stories from Indigenous nations across North and South America
Evocative original artwork by Kait Matthews, blending traditional motifs with modern fine art technique
Elegant design, heavy matte paper, and full-color printing that make this volume a treasure for art collectors and cultural enthusiasts alike
A celebration of Indigenous women’s wisdom, language, and spirit across centuries
Feathers of Wisdom is not just a book-it is an heirloom, a conversation between past and present, and a tribute to the women who kept the sacred stories alive.
Feathers of Wisdom
Feathers of Wisdom is a lavish, wide-ranging collection that gathers forty-four legends, myths, and historical portraits of Indigenous women across many nations and traditions, pairing each retelling with cultural context and luminous illustration. Authors Leigh Podgorski and Kait Matthews frame the book with a moving concern for language, survival, and cultural continuity, then build a mosaic of women who are not flattened into a single ideal but appear as warriors, lovers, creators, protectors, mothers, visionaries, and divine figures. Reading it, I felt the book was trying to do two things at once: preserve story and kindle reverence. That dual ambition gives it its shape, from the harrowing prologue about residential schools and the Sixties Scoop to the recurring chapter pattern of historical background, legend, and reflective “speaks” passages that invite the reader into contemplation.
What stayed with me most was the emotional range of the women gathered here. The book can move from fierce sacrifice to tenderness in a heartbeat. Aliquipiso stepping forward to save her people has the stark clarity of myth at its most elemental, while Blue Flower’s refusal to betray her promise gives her story a quiet, almost painful dignity. Later, Buffalo Calf Road Woman charging into battle to save her brother and then riding into the legend of Little Bighorn brings a different force altogether, one rooted in nerve, momentum, and defiance. I admired how insistently the book resists any small, ornamental idea of womanhood. These figures are not decorative symbols. They act, endure, create, rescue, foresee. At its best, the book made me feel the old power of story as moral weather, something you don’t just observe but stand inside.
The book is earnest, incantatory, and often quite beautiful. Podgorski clearly favors a heightened, devotional register, and sometimes that lyric intensity works wonderfully, especially when it leans into image and transformation, as in Aliquipiso becoming honeysuckle and woodbine, or in Spider Woman learning to weave the geometry of the universe from the night sky itself. The illustrations deepen that dreamlike quality and give the book much of its atmosphere. The reflective “speaks” sections occasionally felt more prescriptive than the legends around them, as though the spell of the narrative was being translated into a lesson. I respected the sincerity of the impulse. The ideas here about language as identity, story as continuity, and women as bearers of cultural memory are not casually offered. They come freighted with grief, repair, and conviction, and that gravity gives the whole project real heart.
I came away from Feathers of Wisdom less interested in judging it by the standards of a conventional anthology than in recognizing what it is trying to hold together: beauty, homage, loss, resilience, and remembrance. I don’t think every page lands with equal force, but the book’s spirit is generous and unmistakable, and its strongest passages have a solemn radiance that stayed with me. I’d recommend it to readers drawn to mythology, Indigenous storytelling, women-centered spiritual history, and illustrated books that invite slow, reflective reading rather than quick consumption.
Pages: 294 | ISBN : 978-1966187059
Walks Far Man
Walks Far Man: In Step with History on the Pacific Crest Trail is a nearly-400 page recounting of one man’s journey on the Pacific Crest Trail, told alongside a deep dive into the history and culture of Native American tribes who once lived along and followed the same route. This subject matter is perhaps less surprising when one considers the author: Jim Ostdick is a retired Earth Science teacher living near the central California coast on the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Ohlone. It is no shock then that his book combines knowledge of science, the Earth, and Native American history. However, this description perhaps does Ostdick’s story a disservice; there is a level of beautiful and evocative storytelling that cannot be boiled down to any scientific objectivity. In Ostdick’s own words, this story is a “caffeine-fueled blend of fact, fiction, myth, and legend.”
Read this book at your own risk: it may cause readers to want to hike 2000+ miles! I was not expecting this informative book to be so captivating. I worried it would sound much like a textbook. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the author’s storytelling abilities. Ostdick beautifully blends the past and present in a way that only supports his conclusions about human connectivity and makes you feel unexpectedly involved in something much bigger than yourself.
Whether you actually want to hike the PCT or not, this book is a chance to catch at least a glimpse of the life-changing properties of such an undertaking. We’ve all heard people say such experiences changed their lives…well, this book places readers right onto the trail alongside the other hikers. Hilarious anecdotes of Ostdick’s time on the PCT juxtaposed with the history of tribes who once made the areas their home provides an incredible look at how we are unwaveringly connected to those who came before us. In Ostdick’s words, “[the science is] pretty obvious. We are not apart from nature. We are nature.” If that doesn’t give you an inspiring feeling of connection, I don’t know what will!
Page: 378 | ASIN : B08KYHQBZZ
