Elyse is an empty-nest mother and artist in Alaska, and Astrid is a paleobotany professor in North Carolina. When the seemingly fulfilling lives of these distanced childhood friends are shaken, everything they’ve carefully established—from friends to careers to marriages—shifts, slips, unravels. 

 

Identity and understanding are fluid and plural, yet the histories of violence and oppression influence and shape everything in the world because the past, present, and future exist in the same plane and at the same time. Gagaan Xʼusyee / Beneath the Foot of the Sun is a unique collection of Indigenous cultural work and Lingít literature in the tradition of Nora Marks Dauenhauer, and in the broader contemporary company of Joy Harjo and Sherwin Bitsui.