Echo Loba, Loba Echo by Sonja Swift
Echo Loba Loba Echo (Rocky Mountain Books), subtitled Of Wisdom, Wolves and Women is Sonja Swift’s first full-length book. She is a published poet and prose writer with articles and photo essays to her credit. Among them are Alphabet Atlas, a series of prose poems and Tarot of Transformation, vignettes on the major arcana cards which depict archetypes of spiritual quests. She is a graduate of California College of the Arts, a private art and design school located in Berkeley, California.
The wolves paw illustrations on the inside covers were drawn by notable Danish-Greenlandic artist Naja Abelsen whose commissions have included many Danish postage stamps. The eloquent foreword was written by Winona LaDuke, a Harvard and Antioch University-educated environmental activist, economist and member of the Anishinaabe, formerly Ojibwe Tribe.
Protections and Broken Promises
There are 19 Anishinaabe reservations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana in areas that remain home to the dwindling population of the timber wolf. These real and spirit animals are revered as four-footed family members. The tribal reservations were declared off-limits to hunting after the Endangered Species Act protections for wolves were rescinded in 2012.
In 2021, Wisconsin, bowing to demands by lobbyists and hunting advocates who insisted wolves kill game deer, reopened wolf kills. Disastrously, 500 wolves were killed in short order. The Anishinaabe sued the state for violation of treaty agreements.
Wolves have been persecuted, hunted and killed in various ways to the point of extinction, as swiftly and steadily as indigenous peoples were also eliminated. Winona LaDuke queries, “In this time of the sixth mass extinction, how do we return wolves, how do we return with our children and grandchildren? With love and prayer.”
Here is some positive news from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
“Following a February 10, 2022, court order, gray wolves in the contiguous 48 states and Mexico — with the exception of the Northern Rocky Mountain population — are now protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as threatened in Minnesota and endangered in the remaining states. Critical habitat for gray wolves in Minnesota and Michigan and the 4(d) rule for gray wolves in Minnesota are also reinstated.”
Nonfiction, Poetry and Prose Woven Together
Mankind has unleashed a worldwide biodiversity disaster with the increase in wolf kills. It is profoundly upsetting the precarious balance of nature and threatens to hasten the destruction of our global environment. Echo Loba Loba Echo is a love song to the Wolf. In the language of the Anishinaabe, it is called Ma’iingan Naagamowin. Author Sonja Swift traveled widely in places where wolves once thrived, extensively researching their natural habitat, their behaviors and the horrifying history of the relentless drive to exterminate these intelligent animals. She has written a moving, poignant hybrid work of creative nonfiction, a blend of prose and poetry in a series of brief essays. Some of the factual tragedies she has exposed may break your heart.
Sonja Swift is an articulate, fervent voice for animal conservation. In clear language, she demonstrates the plight of wolves and clarifies misunderstandings about their nature while fervently hoping humans will come to their senses and grant them the protections required to live, thrive and recover.
Among the major misconceptions about wolves regarded as predators are fairy tales and a fallacious mythology that has arisen about their inherent danger to people. There is a prevalent fear that wolves will, unprovoked, attack and kill humans. However, records clearly belie the perception, as unprovoked wolf attacks on people are actually extremely rare.
Her research reveals that in North America since 1922 there have been only six people killed by wolves, two of them reportedly from rabies contracted by bites. Contrast this with the statistics that domesticated dogs kill 20-30 people annually in the United States, cows kill about 20 people per year and wildly exceeding these figures man is surely the most dangerous predator of all species. Wolf packs are typically family units that travel, play, stay and hunt together.
Unlike dogs and cats which may worry other animals to death for sport, wolves hunt for survival and do not kill more than they will consume. Wolves in the wild are an essential component of a healthy ecological system and require active protection for the benefit of our fragile planet.
The Love of a Mother
Sonja Swift stated the vision for this story began while she was pregnant with her son. Love is a “central undercurrent”: “The love of a mother for her child, the love of a woman for the world her child is inheriting. Wolves are known mothers, protectors, fiercely devoted.” Sonja acknowledges that “the making of this book draws on many people’s wisdom” and includes several pages of source materials in the end pages.
Two of the books in the bibliography I can personally recommend are Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf and Barry Lopez’s Artic Dreams. I have been fortunate to have observed wolves in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park on several occasions beginning in 1995 when they were reintroduced. Watching them play with their pups or streak majestically across the land is simply awe-inspiring. Here is some additional information about wolves and wolf sanctuaries in the USA and a link to an article about the benefits of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
Sonja Swift is a writer and poet of hybrid forms. She has published a range of poems as well as various articles and photo essays. Her work has appeared in Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, Langscape Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, the anthology Fire & Rain: Ecopoetry of California by Scarlet Tanager, Rock & Sling: a journal of witness, Barren Magazine, Wild Gods, an anthology by New Rivers Press, Kestrel Journal and The Madrona Project: Human Communities in Wild Places published by Empty Bowl Press, among others. She is the author of Alphabet Atlas, a chapbook of prose poems published by Deconstructed Artichoke Press and Tarot of Transformation, a series of short stories published by True Story, a publication of Creative Nonfiction. She holds an MFA in writing 
from California College of the Arts, an individualized MA from Goddard College and a BA in cultural ecology from the University of California Santa Cruz. Sonja is Danish-American and comes from dusty, sometimes emerald, coastal hills amidst a chain of old volcanic peaks that stretch into the Pacific Ocean. Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves and Women is her first book.
Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabe writer, farmer and economist. She is the author of the novel Last Standing Woman, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming, The Militarization of Indian Country, The Sugar Bush, The Winona LaDuke Reader, and To Be A Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.
