Listening Once Again to Our Great Mother by Elder Bill Jones and Karen Moe
Advocacy takes many forms. It grows through discovery, deepens through listening, and flourishes through relationships.
In Listening Once Again to Our Great Mother: The Fairy Creek Blockades and the Life Story of Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones and Karen Moe invite readers into a deeply personal journey of healing, reconnection, and responsibility. Through Elder Bill’s life story and his reflections on the Fairy Creek blockades—Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience—the book explores our relationship with old-growth forests, Indigenous knowledge, and what it means to care for the living world.
Throughout my career, I have learned that some of our most important insights about forests come not only through scientific discovery, but through listening—to Indigenous Knowledge, to lived experience, and to the forests themselves. Elder Bill’s story reminds us that caring for forests is ultimately about relationships: with one another, with the land, and with future generations.
Having witnessed the Fairy Creek blockades firsthand, I know they were about far more than old-growth forests. They revealed what becomes possible when people come together in service of one another and of the living world that sustains us. Bill and Karen have captured that experience with remarkable honesty, generosity, and hope.
With the masterful insight and skill of Karen Moe, Elder Bill Jones breaks our hearts open with his deeply personal exposé of the ongoing trauma inflicted on Indigenous people and their beautiful ancestral forests by colonial capitalism in Canada. With the deep wisdom that only comes with knowing, Elder Bill leads the enduring citizens’ movement to protect the last remaining old-growth forests at Fairy Creek in British Columbia. The collective transformation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people standing together for the trees—and ultimately for their own future—has forever changed the culture of Canada. This book belongs in the curriculum of all students of our Great Mother, and especially in the schools and universities of Canada.
My team and I are deeply grateful to Bill and Karen for their trust and honoured to help amplify this important contribution.
Listening Once Again to Our Great Mother will be released on September 1, 2026 by Dundurn Press.
About Elder Bill Jones
Elder Bill Jones’ life spans the spiritual and emotional devastation of the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada. From a childhood and early adulthood on the Pacheedaht First Nation reservation navigating the fall out of trauma from the residential school system, to the racism he experienced working in the colonized world, he became a ʔuuštaqyu through his own spiritual awakening and is a holder of First Nations traditions and ritual. He lives in Sooke, BC.
About Karen Moe
Karen Moe is a writer, artist, and feminist activist. She has been published internationally in English and Spanish and has exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and Mexico. She is the founder and editor of Vigilance Magazine. Her debut book, Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor, is being translated into Spanish and adapted for film. She lives in Lantzville, BC and Mexico City.