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A powerful account of the deep connection between the Koyukon people of western Alaska and the natural world that sustains them

A blending of ethnography, personal reflections, and natural history, Make Prayers to the Raven is a moving account of the Koyukon people of western Alaska, who follow a traditional lifeway of hunting, trapping, and fishing in remote villages scattered across the boreal forest. Intimacy with nature is the foundation of their existence, and they have accumulated a masterly knowledge of their environment. The Koyukon hunter moves through a watchful forest, kills with humility and respect, and treats his catch as a being filled with power.

In Make Prayers to the Raven, Nelson describes, from a Koyukon point of view, , elements of the earth, sky, and atmosphere of the boreal forest, as well as the significant plants and animals. He retells their origins in the dreamlike Distant Time, their spirit powers, their behavior and personality, and the rules dictating their proper treatment by men and women. Make Prayers to the Raven leads the reader to an appreciation of the power and substantiality of Koyukon beliefs, and it serves the Koyukon people themselves by educating others about their way of life and by providing the Koyukon with a means of passing on traditional knowledge to their children.

With its titular nod to the most ominous bird in literature, perched on that first pew reserved for mourners, Raven on the Moaners' Bench locates itself within the oceanic canon that grapples with loss and within the rich history of Black letters, marking a staggering achievement in both. Simultaneously generational and personal, these poems encompass the boundless record of racial injustice in the United States while honoring the particular stories — the irreplaceable personalities, memories, and voices — of each individual life. Lilley memorializes familiar figures, martyrs, and strangers as he speaks to his dead younger brother, to Trayvon Martin, to Freddie Gray, and to two men he is "grateful for but [has] never / had the occasion to know" — two men whom he remains aware of because they are, like him, among "the only four black men / driving these Victorian streets" where "the same cop" pulls them over repeatedly. The sundown specter here takes form as an officer of the law, but these lyrics inventory the many shadows twining over the long road Black Americans have walked in the last four centuries. Lilley casts his words between realms, turning back for Jeff, the brother disabled by a drunk driver at 19 who spent an estranged and troubled adulthood away from his family, who "died long before he actually did," vaulted into a maelstrom of mental illness and structural neglect after his accident. Laying these poems at the moaners' bench as "audible expressions / of spiritual need," "of bodily reaching / toward the lifting away," Lilley testifies to the burden of suffering he, his loved ones, his ancestors, and his peers have carried. And then he releases it from where he stands, graveside in his psychological landscape, beside his brother lain down "against / a wilderness of hope."

Raven on the Moaners' Bench writes into grace, opening an exit from a violent cycle, making possible a lighter future while refusing to forget this country's incalculable debt. The inward searching and cross-country migration that Lilley's family, and many other African Americans, have experienced several times in their own histories form the desire for a livable place where safety and opportunity coincide. Jeff walked across America, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, only to die sleeping outside in Los Angeles; this book bears witness to that desperate pilgrimage. Addressing Jeff, Lilley pens a requiem for roadkill he encountered "in a Northwest pathway of [his] own / migration, far from [their] Southern roots": "I offer up the sacrifice of one doe sprawled / in the what-was-left-of-her on the pathway / where I had to meet her and bring her away / to show you I understood something of how / you bore a terrible cost for our family, / for this unholy country, a cost for which / I won't allow any repayment / by words, not mine or anyone's, / on any unstained page."