Overview

Inaugural winner of Raven Chronicles Press's Keepers of the Fire Prize for Nonfiction in 2025, Positively Uncivilized examines, from an Indigenous perspective, the impact of human inhabitants on the planet Earth. Alongside personal accounts of the deterioration of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and the loss of Indigenous history, the twelve essays in this book emphasize the necessity of community to overcome the damage done by human socio-economic and political systems designed to isolate and shame those vulnerable to those unfair systems. Rena Priest asserts the power of storytelling and poetry to create continuity despite the disruptions caused by settler colonialism as well as cultural and physical genocide. The author is concerned not just with the past but also the present, where the same concerns for survival that her ancestors held are echoed even now in Gaza and Ukraine. Through lyric language and a vulnerability that comes from a space of determined survivance, the author calls for hope linked with action where we, as a community concerned with mutual abundance, can learn to relate to each other and all nature as beings able to make healthy compromises which recognize the importance of true reciprocity. In Positively Uncivilized, Rena Priest reflects on the traditional ecological knowledge of her ancestors, details the destructive history of the ""fish wars"" between her people and extraction industries, and recounts the heartbreaking journey of the Killer Whale/Orca Tokitae and the beautiful lessons that Orcas impart to their human kin.

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Reviews

Rena Priest writes that poems live in breath and memory. Positively Uncivilized is her poem to us-about the loss of land, people, and ecosystems, about the imbalance created by ignoring the interconnectedness of all living things to each other and to the earth, and about the hope, humanity, and love that can be the difference between sustainability and extinction. -Donna Miscolta, author of Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories Priest reflects on the traditional ecological knowledge of her ancestors, details the destructive history of the ""fish wars"" between her people and extraction industries, and recounts the heartbreaking journey of Tokitae and the beautiful lessons that Orcas impart to their human kin. She vividly reminds us how precious our natural world is, giving voice to the beings that have sustained us for millennia. -Tiffany Midge author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's Rena Priest's Positively Uncivilized is a necessary read. Priest writes with lyrical curiosity, sharp resistance, and immense tenderness. This is an essay collection rooted in storytelling - singing forth with gratitude, community, indigenous futures, and entangled relation. Positively Uncivilized moves from research at the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, the criminalization of indigenous fishers, being Washington State's sixth poet laureate, Salish sea salmon and the story of the Salmon Woman, connection during the pandemic, the vulnerable complexities of interracial love, and more. -Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City In Positively Uncivilized, Rena Priest turns her gifts as a poet into a moving collection of essays that speak disarmingly and powerfully for her Lummi people and the land, waters and creatures they've long stewarded. In lively prose that's by turns witty, ironic, lyrical, and wise, she reflects on what it means to be ""civilized,"" and topics such as ecopoetry and the future for Salish sea salmon, as well as larger questions of what's ahead. She writes, ""In our culture we know that one needs three things to be sturdy enough to thrive in hard times: stories, songs, and prayers."" Holly J. Hughes, author of Hold Fast (2020) and Passings, winner of an American Book Award

Author Information

Rena Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) Nation and served as the sixth Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023). She is the first Indigenous person to hold this post. Priest is also the recipient of a Washington State Book Award and an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. She has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, Nia Tero, and the University of Washington Libraries. Her first collection, Patriarchy Blues, received an American Book Award. Her second collection, Sublime Subliminal, was published as the finalist for the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She published a nonfiction book, Northwest Know-how: Beaches, with Sasquatch Books, and is the editor of two anthologies: I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State and The Larger Voice: Celebrating Native Arts and Culture Foundation Literature Fellows. Her poems appear in Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Magazine, ""Poem-a-Day"" at Poets.org, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Priest's nonfiction appears in High Country News, Nautilus Magazine, Seattle Met, Adventures Northwest, American Poets, and Campfire Stories. Priest holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Bellingham, Washington. You can learn more at renapriest.com.

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