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Indigenous Culture

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La Diáspora

People of sub-Saharan African descent have lived in what is today Mexico since the early days of Spanish colonization. . . . Today there are only a handful of communities left with large Black Mexican populations. The Costa Chica, the coastal region of southern Guerrero and northern Oaxaca, boasts the greatest number. . . . My experience in Juárez and the relative scarcity of information about Mexico’s Black communities made me curious to visit the Costa Chica myself. So a few years later I did. I ended up staying there for six months, forming friendships and documenting the residents’ daily life. This is a selection of photos from my time there.

Photographs By Hank Baker December 2023
The Sun Interview

Burning Questions

Meg Krawchuk On Our Changing Relationship With Fire

A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.

By David Mahaffey October 2023
The Sun Interview

No Small Wonder

Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe

Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.

By Mark Leviton August 2023
The Sun Interview

Speaking Of Tongues

Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language

This is an extremely creative and spontaneous moment for language. There are whole sociolects that you and I don’t even know about, because we’re too old or we don’t belong to the communities of people who have come up with them. Emoji are fascinating because they’re a return to the ideographic sources of a lot of writing.

By Finn Cohen April 2023
The Sun Interview

Defending The Roof Of The World

Jamyang Norbu’s Lifelong Quest For Tibetan Independence

The Chinese empire is fragile, because it is built upon oppression. . . . If the oppression is too great, it may all come apart. If the empire were to break up, I think democracy might be possible in the smaller entities that would remain. . . . This is where Tibetans must keep up the fight and prepare for the long haul. We can prevail if we are able to keep our culture intact.

By Judith Hertog May 2021
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Quiet Room

She read a brief passage in a small, clear voice that will live on in my memory. Fluent in sounding out words she didn’t know, she gleaned tones from everyday verbs that I’d never dreamed they possessed, and conferred a strange new life on faded old nouns, as one might draw a hidden thread of some brilliant color from an old rug.

By M. Jones April 2021
Photography

Salt Of The Earth

I was drawn to quite the opposite: curiosities, anachronisms, misfits, innocents, and angels. They quickly became my family. They gave me something my blood relatives could not, something fresh and immediate, accepting and nonjudgmental.

Text And Photographs By Ethan Hubbard January 2021
One Nation, Indivisible

January 2021

Featuring Bill McKibben, Rebecca McClanahan, Derrick Jensen, and more.

December 2020
Photography

Tuvalu

Tuvalu is in danger of disappearing due to sea-level rise. The ocean around it is rising about one inch every five years, twice the global average. It’s estimated that an eight- to sixteen-inch increase will be enough to make the country uninhabitable.

Photographs by Forest Woodward November 2020
The Sun Interview

The Four Invasions

Nick Estes On Indigenous Resistance And The Vision Of A Better Future

Indigenous people are protecting the earth’s lungs and liver. Without us, civilization would be even farther down the road to its own destruction.

By Tracy Frisch May 2020