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Without Reservation

Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors

Published by Bear & Company
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About The Book

A powerful story of spiritual awakening, reconnection with Nature, and rekindling of ancestral wisdom

• Details the author’s encounters with ancestral spirits and animal teachers, such as Coy-Wolf, and profound moments of direct connection with the natural world

• Shows how ancestral connections and intimate communications with Nature are not unique or restricted to those with indigenous cultural roots

• Reveals how reconnection with ancestors and the natural world offers insight and solutions for the complex problems we face

We are but a few generations removed from millennia spent living in intimate contact with the natural world and in close commune with ancestral spirits. Who we are and who we think we are is rooted in historical connections with those who came before us and in our relationships with the land and the sentient natural world. When we wander too far from our roots, our ancestors and kin in the natural world call us home, sometimes with gentle whispers and sometimes in loud voices sounding alarms.

In this powerful story of spiritual awakening, Randy Kritkausky shares his journey into the realm of ancestral Native American connections and intimate encounters with Mother Earth and shows how anyone can spiritually reconnect with their ancestors and Nature. Like 70 percent of those who identify as Native American, Kritkausky grew up off the reservation. As he explains, for such “off reservation” indigenous people rediscovering ancestral practices amounts to a reawakening and offers significant insights about living in a society that is struggling to mend a heavily damaged planet. The author reveals how the awakening process was triggered by his own self-­questioning and the resumption of ties with his Potawatomi ancestors. He details his encounters with ancestral spirits and animal teachers, such as Coy-Wolf. He shares moments of direct connection with the natural world, moments when the consciousness of other living beings, flora and fauna, became accessible and open to communication.

Through his profound storytelling, Kritkausky shows how ancestral connections and intimate communications with Nature are not unique or restricted to those with indigenous cultural roots. Offering a bridge between cultures, a path that can be followed by Native and non-Native alike, the author shows that spiritual awakening can happen anywhere, for anyone, and can open the gateway to deeper understanding.

Excerpt

From Chapter 6: What Coy-Wolf Taught Me

We live in a forested area of Vermont, not high in the Green Mountains but in the flatter Champlain Valley Clayplain. There is as much farmland as forest in our area. It is ideal habitat for deer and other wildlife that like living on forest-meadow boundaries where biodiversity flourishes and protective cover can be quickly found.

A relatively recent arrival in this habitat is the Coy-Wolf. Just a few decades ago the appearance of such mammals was discussed in terms of the rising population of “coyotes.” However, wildlife biologists soon began to take note of the size of these predators and observed characteristics not typical of coyotes. For example, their larger skulls and teeth more resembled those of wolves than coyotes. Then, more recently, with advances in genetic research, it became possible to unravel part of the mystery and migratory history of this new addition to New England wildlife.

It is now recognized that in the 19th century, white European settlers virtually exterminated wolves. With wolves gone in the northeastern United States, coyotes from the southwest slowly migrated northward into this abandoned ecological niche. In the second decade of the 20th century, a coyote and one of the remaining gray wolves in southeastern Canada interbred on or about the site of the current Algonquin Park in Ontario Province. From there, offspring of this new “half-breed” slowly migrated east until they reached Vermont, where a significant population has been established. Many wildlife naturalists consider this coyote-wolf hybrid to be one of the most adaptable species that they have ever studied. Coy-Wolves survive, even thrive, in an extraordinarily wide range of natural and man-made habitats, kind of like Native Americans.

I first encountered Coy-Wolves around the turn of the new millennium, as we began staying in a small cabin on our land while our house was built. We were often greeted at night by the howls of what we then understood to be “the coyotes.” It never occurred to us that the night visitors were actually greeting us, and reminding interlopers whose territory this was. We knew that coyotes communicated with one another, but we did not yet know how to listen, to really listen.

Everything changed with my mother’s death and the kind mentoring and guidance of cousins more versed in our tribal culture than I. Consequently, more recently we were prepared both to listen and to understand our encounters with Coy-Wolves as part of a process of awakening.

On a moon-lit night in January 2018, we were watching a segment of a video-course on Native Americans. The documentary’s historical segments resonated most deeply as they dealt, in depth, with our Potawatomi tribe and its history in the upper Midwest, its forced evacuations and deadly marches westward, its legacy of countless broken treaties.

This kind of intellectual-emotional onslaught through story-telling was leaving us drained every night after watching each new episode of the history series and reflecting on its meaning. The narrator, Professor Daniel Cobb, repeatedly claims that Native Americans have not disappeared. He argues that despite continual miserable betrayals and ignominious defeats and slaughter, Native peoples found ways of adapting and maintaining some continuity, even as many of their lands and cultural practices were taken away, even as they intermarried with whites and assimilated elements of European culture.

Each night this historical conundrum of devastation and revival returned to me in the form of profoundly personal questions and reflection. As we ended our most recent viewing, Carolyn and I went downstairs to play cards in an attempt to get our minds off the perplexing questions, and to regain our composure.

No sooner had we dealt the cards than we noticed the howls. THE HOWLS. Even on a freezing Vermont winter night with doors and windows buttoned-up, the sounds of our visitors came through the walls. The Coy-Wolves were closer than ever. Our visitors demanded attention. But, “What were they saying?” I wondered. The howls continued for quite some time.

Somewhat shaken, I went to bed reflecting on the documentary and the visitations. Then, as is so often the case, the answer came in the middle of the night. It was as if a message buried in the historical documentary’s storyline had clarified, had then been downloaded into my consciousness, and was churning, seeking expression. It hit me. I am a “hybrid” like the Coy-Wolf. And like the Coy-Wolves in Vermont, I am many generations removed from my “pure-blood” ancestors. Like the Coy-Wolf, I am not a lesser being for the dilution of my ancestral blood lines. I am an evolutionary manifestation of adaptation.

And then another personal and intimate connection emerged. I began to visualize the migratory routes of southwestern coyotes as they slowly moved north-eastward in the 19th century, in the exact opposite direction, and in the same time frame that many of my ancestors were being physically driven out of their homelands and off one temporary reservation after another. I also saw the paths of those small numbers of Potawatomi who had escaped from these forced death marches and who had fled to Canada, where their descendants live today. Then, I wondered if the spirits of my ancestors forced westward, of those driven into the desert, had journeyed northward, back home, and then to Canada? Had they cleverly done so in an animal form that no white man would recognize as human, and in a manner that no soldiers could prevent? Were the Coy-Wolves outside my door the embodiment of my ancestors’ wandering spirits?

I think so.

I now hope that I will be worthy of more visitations. I hope that I will be better able to listen to the wisdom they bear. I hope that like Coy-Wolf I can be the conveyor and restorer of my dual heritages, made stronger, not lessened, by the blending.

About The Author

Randy Kritkausky is an enrolled tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He is a founder of ECOLOGIA, an international environmental organization that works on the planet’s more extreme challenges, and formerly professor at Keystone College, research scholar at Middlebury College, and Erasmus Mundus Scholar at the Central European University in Budapest and Lund University in Sweden. He lives in Vermont.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Bear & Company (August 11, 2020)
  • Length: 288 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781591433859

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Raves and Reviews

Without Reservation is a wonderful representation of the personal struggles Native American people often find themselves in. The conflicts between societal viewpoints and self-determination cause many to evaluate and reevaluate themselves on a continuous basis. There are often internal power struggles between the European viewpoints of what an Indian should be and the mirror of our ancestors that shows us who we are--by our mere existence. We are all subconsciously drawn to communications from the spirits of our ancestors, the environment, and the animal and plant relatives. We only have to open our ears, hearts, and minds to receive these messages from the great web of life.”

– Chief Don Stevens, Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation

Without Reservation is a surprising treat for a curious, open, and scientifically trained mind. The story of Coy-Wolf is a delightful fusion of engaging storytelling, anthropology, philosophy of biological science, and findings from recent DNA studies. It is a new and exciting way to understand and explain nature, embracing both scientific rationality and indigenous spirituality.”

– Aleh Cherp, professor at the Central European University (Austria) and Lund University (Sweden)

“Randy’s work and experience are at the right time for all of us to explore our inner and outer medicine world for our true renewal. As Randy has seen and felt with his writing, all of us should truly learn to ‘live’ again in our own way and come together as one universal circle. The old ones called it ‘the way of right relationship with all things.’”

– J. T. Garrett, Ed.D., author of Meditations with the Cherokee

“We are all native of Mother Earth. Many of us in the ‘developed world’ are hauled out of our roots by the modern industrial culture’s dream of separation from nature and community. Without Reservation is a very personal and skillful reminder to guide us back to reconnect with our soul’s yearning to be one with nature. It inspires us to reconnect with our spirit helpers and our ancestors to gain real knowledge, wisdom, and wholeness.”

– Itzhak Beery, shamanic healer, teacher, speaker, and author of The Gift of Shamanism, Shamanic Trans

“. . . a personal story about waking up and coming home that is also a guide to rediscovering the signs of nature and our ancestors speaking all around us. Kritkausky weaves an eloquent and enchanting mix of spiritual memoir, chronicling his tectonic and unexpected shifts of identity and reality, with rigorous scholarship providing historical context at just the right moments.”

– Elizabeth E. Meacham, Ph.D., author of Earth Spirit Dreaming

Without Reservation, by Randy Kritkausky of Whiting, made its September debut in the top 10 ‘Hot New Releases’ Amazon listings in the U.S.A. and Canada. Reader feedback from both indigenous people and the mainstream public indicates that the book’s themes resonate deeply with those seeking more intimate connections with nature, and also with those seeking spiritual grounding in times of extreme uncertainty posed by climate change and COVID-19.”

– Whiting, Addison County Independent

“Impressively well written, organized and presented, Without Reservation: Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors is an especially informative and ultimately inspiring personal account that has universal ramifications for his readers”

– Midwest Book Review

"The authors spiritual awakening and incredible storytelling allows the reader to connect and see the world in a new light. While the book is mostly following along his journey, it does open up the readers mind on how they too can reconnect to mother Earth, our ancestors and nature that is all around us. No matter what your family history entails, I highly recommend this book for everyone."

– Amber Barnes, Facing North

"Without Reservation awakened within me the desire to know more about that neglected aspect of myself. And, I would broadly say that the approach and fervent desire that Kritkausky shared could be applied to anyone’s lineage-European, Asian, African, etc. All have historical narratives and ancestral stories to tell. And, as was true for Kritkausky, in connecting with the wisdom of your history, we can better be suited towards living in harmony and respect for one another and ultimately deepen the connections to nature that all indigenous peoples revere."

– Robin Fennelly, Musing Mystical

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