Native Beliefs Research Articles

The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico. By David Tavrez. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 400. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations.

Reviewed by: The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico Frances Berdan The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico. By David Tavárez. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 400. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. The "invisible war" in the title of this book refers to changing Spanish efforts to eradicate native religious beliefs and practices in Mexico—a complicated matter for the Spaniards and an intellectual challenge to any scholar. David Tavárez admirably meets this challenge in this systematic and thoroughly documented work. This book covers a great deal of territory geographically, temporally, and conceptually. Geographically it focuses on Nahuatl-speaking communities in central Mexico (the Basin of Mexico, Toluca, the Cohuixca-Tlalhuica region) and Zapotec speakers in Oaxaca, comparing and contrasting these regions in terms of religious extirpation efforts and native practices and responses (some interpreted as resistance) during the colonial period. The period considered extends from the 1530s to the late eighteenth century and the many changes in Spanish policy, the activities of high-level Spanish officials, and the practice of native religions. Tavárez usefully divides this broad period into four distinct cycles, based on notable changes in Spanish approaches to the treatment of native idolatries. Beyond regional contrasts and temporal dynamics, this book offers useful conceptual approaches. Primary among them is the contrast between collective and elective spheres in native devotions. Spaniards attempted to absorb collective (community-oriented) devotions into Christianity while they sought to suppress elective beliefs and activities centered on calendrical, life-cycle, healing, and other ritual knowledge and activities enacted at a personal level. Tavárez also examines his vast documentary corpus in terms of gender differences in native ritual practitioners and assumes local diversity in native beliefs and practices. These approaches enrich the book in providing meaningful interpretations of complicated processes and interpersonal interactions. Tavárez anchors his discussion in a myriad of documented historical actors and liturgical cases, revealing not only ideological stances but also fascinating social and political [End Page 309] relationships. These cases allow the reader to better understand, for instance, the implementation and distribution of different Spanish extirpation strategies for dealing with "idolaters," from corporal punishment to public humiliation; isolation in a "perpetual prison" (in Oaxaca); confiscation of native images, effigies, and texts; and medical examinations. The cases also embed fascinating details of native ritual specialists, practices, and paraphernalia, a gold mine for any student who might seek associations with pre-Conquest religions as revealed through archaeological remains and ethnohistoric records. This book offers the reader much to think about, in particular the theme of regional and ethnic diversity. While this book concentrates on comparisons and contrasts between central Mexico and Oaxaca, Tavárez repeatedly emphasizes diversity, not only along these broad regional lines, but also from community to community, person to person, and time period to time period. This is a point well taken, and worth considering in any aspect of research in culturally and politically complicated regions. Also highlighted is the issue of local conflicts and factions, not just along native vs. Spanish lines, but among Spanish authorities themselves (ecclesiastical and civil) and commonly enough among indigenous persons of the same community who found themselves competing for local resources and political positions. For instance, in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Oaxaca, some local native factions made sorcery and idolatry accusations against one another since "any native official convicted of idolatry or superstition was removed from his post" and that position would then be available to a new occupant (p. 255). Especially concerning native-to-native conflicts, these cases reveal more than just religious matters at the community level; they provide a window into broader economic, social, and political relationships as well. For example, certain trends in accusations suggest social status and gender issues: central Mexico experienced a decrease in accusations against male nobles and officeholders from the 1520s to the late eighteenth century, while accusations against commoner women increased from the early seventeenth century onward, indicating a "disassociation of traditional ritual practices with public office" in the first instance, and "an increase in the visibility of female specialists in the elective sphere" in the second...

Sex, Religion, and the New Woman in China: A Comparative Reading of Sarah Grand and Alicia Little

Sex, Religion, and the New Woman in China:A Comparative Reading of Sarah Grand and Alicia Little Ann Heilmann (bio) Victorian Feminists often invoked such tropes as the Chinese woman’s bound feet, the Arab woman’s veiled seclusion, or the American slave as metaphors of women’s social and legal confinement in Britain. In this essay, I explore how two British New Woman writers with personal experience of China, the doyenne of British New Womanhood in the 1890s, Sarah Grand (1854–1943), and the lesser-known Alicia (Mrs. Archibald) Little (1845–1926), drew on and transformed the first of these tropes to universalize feminist concerns and relativize the Western claim to moral, religious, and political supremacy. As Elizabeth Chang and Shanyn Fiske have illustrated, China, as a “field of imagined visual possibility” (Chang 1), had a considerable “spectral presence” in Victorian literature and frequently served as a “mirror for Western projection” (Fiske, “Orientalism” 222, 219). The complexities of this projection hold particular significance for the work of New Woman writers who were familiar with Chinese culture and indigenous reform movements and at the same time had an investment in representing the Western feminist project as a quasi-religious mission for moral and social advancement. Grand spent her apprenticeship years as the wife of a British army surgeon in China and southeast Asia in the 1870s (Kersley 37), utilizing this experience in her journalism (“The Great Typhoon,” 1881; “Ah Man,” 1893), her first novel-tract, Two Dear Little Feet (1873), and her feminist “coming-out” novel, Ideala (1888), in which the heroine takes up social purity activism after encountering Chinese women reformers. While Grand dramatized the New Woman’s rejection of marriage and Little depicted her effort to reform marriage from within, both writers explored the sexual double standard and became suffrage supporters. Born nine years before Grand, Little authored a spate of society novels, cautiously exploring women’s desire for an object in life and the legal plight of wives and mothers in the late 1870s to mid-1880s, including Margery Travers (1878) and Mother Darling (1885) (Fiske, “Asian” 16–17). Her move to China in 1886, where she joined her businessman husband, shifted her attention to Chinese culture and indigenous women’s condition, inspiring A Marriage in China (1896), two further novels, and nine travelogues and factual accounts of [End Page 61] Chinese society. Relatives thought her eccentric in her “ardent enthusiasms. The rights of married women to their own money, Women’s Suffrage and … the unbinding of Chinese girl children’s feet.… We never quite knew what to expect” (Bewicke 19–20). As the founder of the Natural Feet Society (Tien Tsu Hui), Little engaged in a form of feminist activism comparable to Grand’s social purism (Fiske, “Asian” 12, 19; Thurin 164, 182–87; Young ii–vi; Little, Blue Gown 253–304 and Intimate China 134–63). The reformist spirit of both writers had its conceptual roots in Christianity. If social purity feminism developed from the earlier nineteenth-century evangelical movements of temperance, moral reform, and abolitionism (see Banks 11–27), the notion of “natural” as “heavenly” feet (the Chinese word tianzu encompasses both) was, as Dorothy Ko notes, grounded in “Christian doctrines while appealing to native belief and terminology” (16). Ideala and A Marriage in China correlate the personal with the political and the sexual with the religious, embedding Victorian social reform concerns within an examination of Anglo-Chinese relations. Both tender quasi-utopian resolutions that posit female authority in the regulation of the family (Little) and society (Grand) as the linchpin of (inter)national renovation and exalt the heroines as figures of Christian salvation. While Grand’s Ideala finds spiritual purification in China and becomes a “saintly” woman who combines Eastern wisdom with a Western sociopolitical mission inspired by indigenous women, Little’s Lilian travels to China in search of companionship, missionary humanitarianism, and romantic love, only to discover the human sacrifice of religious, cultural, and sexual imperialism. Like Ideala, Lilian returns with a mission, here individualized rather than collectivized; her adoption of her husband’s mixed-race children born to his Chinese mistress gestures toward the creation of a multiracial society. Both writers...

Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion (review)

Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009. 251 pp. Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF demonstrates Laurel Kendall's rigorous and masterful observation that the aboriginal belief system and its practices can serve as lens through which we can see modernity and social life as they continually unfold in South Korea. It is paragon of work written by mature ethnographer having built long-term engagement in the field, in this case in exploration of issues relating to Korean religion and modernity. This book's contribution to both subjects clearly builds upon Kendall's research and publication record from the last three decades. To name few, these publications include Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits (1985), The Life and Hard Times of Korean Shaman (1988), Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (1996), and Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (2002). Along with these previous publications on religion specializing in shamanic rituals and modernity with focus on women's worlds and gendered practices, this book continues to articulate the understanding of Korean shamanism as consisting of on-going practices of the present time-not as an icon of feudal past. This understanding comes from her unfailing challenge to the assumption that shamanism represents something fixed and dead, and therefore something not modern. This, in turn, connects to criticism of the dichotomy between tradition and modernity. In this exemplary anthropological work, based on now life-long engagements with the same research participants, it is extremely helpful and intriguing to discover changes in the lives of informants with whom we are already familiar from Kendall's previous work. For example, we again encounter Yongsu's Mother, the key informant shaman from Pine Endurance Village, the ethnographic site featured in Kendall's books in the 1980s. At that time, Yongsu's Mother was novice professional shaman whose narratives and relationship with other women clients reflected the challenge and solidarity set by rural Korean women against patriarchal society rendered particularly so as an impoverished nation still struggling in the aftermath the Korean War. The personal-lifeprogress of this shaman is shown in Kendall's 1990s publication on Korean weddings, which focused on the experience of this shaman as mother of adult children. Yongsu's Mother appears regularly in Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF, now senior shaman who trains and accompanies other professional shamans in successful shamanic ritual events, and whose life story and shamanic practices have come to represent experiences and practices of semi-urban middle class. The connection between the material affluence of booming Korean economy that has adapted to Western commodification is richly evoked in Kendall's delineation of Yongsu's Mother's narratives that validate the offering (referred to by the participants in these shamanic rituals as the divine appetite ) of Chivas Regal and bananas that takes place as part of current shamanic ceremonies. Readers of Kendall's scholarship will further appreciate her sense of and sensitivity to time-of the duration of its passing and the (critical reflection of) nostalgia that emerges from it-that is crossed in the lives and careers for both research participants and the researcher throughout their longterm relationships. In other words, readers glimpse not only Yongsu's Mother as she advances in life and her career, but also the author's paralleled maturity, revealed in dialectical nostalgic reflection: while resistant to a simple comparison between the materialist present and more innocent time when all of us were younger (131), Kendall candidly reminisces about Korean rural communal life before televisions and automobiles became more prevalent, taking attention away from ritual and personal gatherings. …

Blood in Hittite Ritual

The generally anonymous authors of the texts that describe the rites of the Hittite state cult were practical men.1 Laconically they set forth the procedures to be followed and wasted few words explicating or justifying either the ceremonies or the individual ritual actions of which they were composed. Thus in our consideration of the meaning and function of blood in Hittite religious practice,2 we cannot avail ourselves of any clear statement of native belief analogous to that found for Israel in the Hebrew Bible: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.”3 Nonetheless, Hittite compositions of various genres do contain passages revealing that in Ḫ atti blood (esḫ ar 4) was recognized as the carrier of life and strength. Conversely, its presence was taken as an index of mortality. In a legendary account of the campaigns conducted in Anatolia by the Sargonic king Narām-Sin, the ruler commands that a scout be dispatched to perform the following test on terrifying beings encountered by his forces:

What to the American Indian Is the Fourth of July? Moving beyond Abolitionist Rhetoric in William Apess's Eulogy on King Philip

Nineteenth-century Pequot minister William Apess has appeared to many readers over the years as a Native American figure who fully assimilated into the expectations of the dominant culture, his role as Christian minister placing an insuperable distance between him and the traditions of his people. More recently, critics have come to find in Apess a radical voice latching on to the power of the pulpit and the rhetoric of the abolitionist movement to argue for Native rights. In either case, Apess seems to have risen up from a kind of intellectual vacuum with no way of accounting for his inspired activism. Lopenzina seeks to relocate Apess within the intellectual traditions of the Native northeast. If Apess appears as an isolated figure, having achieved a measure of success in spite of his inauspicious origins, this may have something to do with the oral methodologies of Native peoples in the nineteenth century and the archival absences imposed by a settler culture determined to make Natives “vanish” from the colonial scene. When we make the attempt to regard Apess's narrative from “Native space,” weighing the loose materials of his life as he recorded them against a deeper understanding of indigenous tradition and practice, we begin to see Apess as an active participant in a network of Native community and belief. Eulogy on King Philip shows Apess connecting with Native methodologies in heretofore unnoticed ways, drawing on traditional Native diplomacy and the “tragic wisdom” of his people to carve out a message of interracial peace.

"The Sabbath of the Heart": Transgressive Love in Lady Morgan's India

The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811) by Sidney Owenson (Lady Morgan after her marriage 1812), presents tragic love story between Western cleric and an Indian princess, fraught with all the tensions and pressures that contraries of culture bring to bear on forbidden love. The Missionary was Romeo and Juliet religious garb, crossing sacred boundaries climate hostile to both of them. Such transgressive love is powerful metaphor for cultural conflict, which Owenson uses to represent the crisis faced by non-European woman love with celibate Christian and Western missionary. Much of it is set the valley of Kashmir, India, during time of political conflict and religious tempest when idealism, nationalism, patriotism, and radicalism collided with an oppressive European hegemony over an ancient people from civilization alien to Western understanding. Percy Bysshe Shelley called The Missionary a beautiful thing (qtd. Wright 43), and the Indian setting and themes probably influenced Alastor. From the example of Shelley, one can see that India held powerful allure for British writers of this time as its exotic world clashed with the West. India, as Julia Wright observes, in The Missionary is contrivance for addressing colonialism and the attendant issue of religious intolerance while apparently dislocating them from Owenson's main sphere of influence, nineteenth-century Ireland ... (19). Joseph Lennon, however, sees Ireland and Indian culturally connected, identifies an Irish Orientalism and Celtic roots the East. By the time Owenson wrote The Missionary, India presented special problems for Westerners and epitomized similar problems closer to home. Lady Morgan uses the religiously inscribed transgressive love experience as the crucible to examine the effects of colonialism. The Missionary provides distorting mirror of conflicting religious practice and custom, those of the imperialists against native beliefs and patterns of behavior. Lady Morgan writes her Dramatic Scenes. ''Those who would live by the world, must live it, and with it: and adapt themselves to its form and pressure' (v) (qtd. Canuel 123), an appeal of religious tolerance by those who live secular world. Referring to Lady Morgan's The Wild Irish. Girl, Mark Canuel argues that religious intolerance this period served writers as way of exploring and understanding a feeling of separation with community--a separation from communal feeling that is itself communal ... (268). In The Missionary, community is vexed issue, and the religiously oriented characters of the novel, Princess Luxima and Hilarion the Missionary, seek to define themselves and their worlds and find their mediating communities and means to validate their relationship maelstrom of challenge and threat. Thus, Lady Morgan scrutinizes her novels topical, politically charged religion as means of creating fictions that resonated for her readers then and now when scholars and critics are challenged by the representation of non-European people, places, and cultures British Romantic literature. Transgression has special meaning novel published 1811, novel that deliberately poses several different worlds and circumscribed communities, which have unique and often conflicting patterns of mores and codes of behavior and sanction. Sydney Owenson had never been to India, though she was reputed to have been diligent the research to substantiate her novels, and the authorial foot-notes The Missionary exemplify her scholarship, particularly her sympathetic portrayal of Hinduism, as Michael J. Franklin has argued (General Introduction, 25). The Missionary opens Portugal, under the despotic rule of Spain, then relocates to India, the province now called Kashmir, as ideologically tense between Muslims and Hindus two hundred years ago as it is the modern world. …

Nuvatukya’ovi, San Francisco Peaks

The recent legal battle between the U.S. Forest Service and 13 Native American tribes, including the Hopi, concerning the San Francisco Peaks constitutes a serious threat to fundamental religious beliefs that are representative of viable cultural practices. In this study, cultural meanings ascribed to the San Francisco Peaks (Nuvatukya’ovi) as expressed in Hopi verbal and visual arts are examined in an effort to clarify the sacred nature of the San Francisco Peaks. Our approach emphasizes the historical and temporal continuity of cultural practices and ethical ties between people and landscape. The legal dispute between the forest service and the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort and 13 Native American tribes over recreational use of the San Francisco Peaks has exposed fundamentally different cultural views of the land that relate to how the land is conceived and therefore to how it can be treated and used.1 While the forest service has a mandate to facilitate multiple uses of the land under its care, in so doing, it is required to protect the various interests of groups that might be affected by these uses. Collectively, one of these groups is made up of native tribes who claim that the San Francisco Peaks are sacred and would be profaned by the use of reclaimed wastewater piped from the city of Flagstaff to make artificial snow for the ski resort. In an effort to further inform readers about native beliefs relative to this issue, we attempt to provide a more detailed discussion of some of the religious beliefs and practices from the perspective of one of the plaintiffs, the Hopi. We will specifically address not only the issue of the sacredness of the land but also, from this perspective, the reasons why snowmaking using treated sewage effluent is antithetical to the religious practices of these native groups.

Understanding, beliefs and perspectives of Aboriginal people in Western Australia about cancer and its impact on access to cancer services.

BackgroundDespite a lower overall incidence, Aboriginal Australians experience poorer outcomes from cancer compared with the non-Aboriginal population as manifested by higher mortality and lower 5-year survival rates. Lower participation in screening, later diagnosis of cancer, poor continuity of care, and poorer compliance with treatment are known factors contributing to this poor outcome. Nevertheless, many deficits remain in understanding the underlying reasons, with the recommendation of further exploration of Aboriginal beliefs and perceptions of cancer to help understand their care-seeking behavior. This could assist with planning and delivery of more effective interventions and better services for the Aboriginal population. This research explored Western Australian (WA) Aboriginal peoples' perceptions, beliefs and understanding of cancer.MethodsA total of 37 Aboriginal people from various geographical areas within WA with a direct or indirect experience of cancer were interviewed between March 2006 and September 2007. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and coded independently by two researchers. NVivo7 software was used to assist data management and analysis. A social constructionist framework provided a theoretical basis for analysis. Interpretation occurred within the research team with member checking and the involvement of an Aboriginal Reference Group assisting with ensuring validity and reliability.ResultsOutcomes indicated that misunderstanding, fear of death, fatalism, shame, preference for traditional healing, beliefs such as cancer is contagious and other spiritual issues affected their decisions around accessing services. These findings provide important information for health providers who are involved in cancer-related service delivery.ConclusionThese underlying beliefs must be specifically addressed to develop appropriate educational, screening and treatment approaches including models of care and support that facilitate better engagement of Indigenous people. Models of care and support that are more culturally-friendly, where health professionals take account of both Indigenous and Western beliefs about health and the relationship between these, and which engage and include Indigenous people need to be developed. Cultural security, removing system barriers and technical/scientific excellence are all important to ensure Indigenous people utilise healthcare to realise the benefits of modern cancer treatments.

Higher Education as an Alternative Point of Access to Holistic Health

Because the United States has not implemented a national health program with universal entitlement, lack of access to health care frequently prevails. Creative efforts at the undergraduate level attempt to meet the health care needs of students and local communities through education in complementary and alternative medicine. At the University of New Mexico-Taos, an innovative curriculum in Holistic Health and Healing Arts offers entry-level students, most of whom come from low-income and minority backgrounds, an opportunity to explore alternative therapies in a nurturing, low-cost environment. The university provides support services and supplements students' income through grants and financial aid. Students learn new health care behaviors and preventive approaches that reduce their dependence on allopathic medicine. Courses respect values and practices in native belief systems. From the perspective of social justice, the college corridor offers a safety net and a springboard for the underserved, as well as an opportunity to redress health disparities while promoting integrative approaches to health care.

Anthropological Approaches to ‘Primitive’ Religions

The study of religion by social anthropologists, as distinct from the classical philosophical approach of the Greeks and their medieval heirs, began in the late 19th century with Edward Tyler’s Primitive Culture (1871). Tyler’s approach was completely a priori in style in that it did not rest on systematic field work or empirical observation. The same approach characterized James Frazer’s famous book, The Golden Bough (1891). Baldwin Spencer, the founding father of Australian anthropology, was persuaded by Frazer to see the sophisticated religious beliefs and rites of the Aboriginal groups he studied in central Australia as mere ‘magic’. By the 1960s, a new generation of anthropologists, influenced by Claude Levi-Strauss and English thinkers like E. Evans Pritchard, had arrived on the scene. This new ‘turn’ in anthropology led a number of contemporary scholars to the radical position that Western anthropology itself is a socio-cultural phenomenon that can be investigated in a broadly anthropological way. To see what this involves, it is worthwhile examining a number of crucial misunderstandings of Australian Aboriginal beliefs and practices that have been the artefactual result of various anthropological approaches.

Peculiarities of Transformation of the Original Religious Beliefs of Australian Indigenous Societies in Modern Conditions

Indigenous beliefs of Australia have attracted the attention of numerous generations of researchers of the XIX - XX centuries. The reasons for this interest were not limited by the exotic beliefs of the traditional beliefs of the distant region of the planet. Anthropologists, ethnographers, sociologists, historians and religious scholars, considering the preservation of one of the most archaic systems of economy and social organization among the tribes of Australia, respectively, considered the aboriginal beliefs as a spiritual result, reflecting the most archaic system of social relations, referring to them as a kind , "The standard of primordial religion." So, the Soviet researcher S. Tokarev notes that the beliefs of Australians are the most archaic religious phenomenon that has remained to this day and a classic, typical example of totemism.

Accounting for Variability in Mother–Child Play

In this article, I highlight contrasting perspectives in the study of mother–child play. One contrast emerges as we use the lens offered by anthropology as opposed to the more commonly used lens of psychology. A second contrast is apparent from descriptions of childhood in the ethnographic record compared to observations of children in the upper strata of modern society. Psychologists and advocates who adopt their perspective view mother–child play—from infancy—as both necessary for normal development and an unlimited good. Its self‐evident value should be impressed on those who are unenlightened. Anthropologists frequently note the absence of mother–child play and, equally important, provide culturally nuanced explanations for why this is so. Psychologists see mother–child play as natural; anthropologists see it as cultural. I conclude by questioning the wholesale exportation of a culture‐specific child‐rearing strategy that may be quite incongruent with native belief and practice.

Why have you come here?: the Jesuits and the first evangelization of Native America

Christian evangelism was the ostensible motive for much of the early European interaction with the indigenous population of America. The religious orders of the Catholic Church were the front-line representatives of Western culture and the ones who met indigenous America face-to-face. They were also the primary agents of religious change. In this book, Nicholas Cushner provides the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the American missionary activities of the Jesuits. From the North American encounter with the Indians of Florida in 1565, through Mexico, New France, the Paraguay Reductions, Andean Perus, to contact with Native Americans in Maryland on the eve of the American Revolution, members of the order interacted with both native elites and colonizers. Drawing on the abundant documentation of and scholarship about these encounters, Cushner examines how the Jesuits behaved toward the indigenous population and analyzes the way in which native belief systems were replaced by Christianity. He seeks to understand how and why the initial European-Indian encounter changed not only the religion of the natives, but also their material culture, economic activity, social organization, and even their sexual behavior. Always sensitive to the influence of European cultural filters on Jesuit accounts, Cushner attempts as far as possible to discover the authentic voices of the Native Americans with whom they interacted. The result is a fascinating and highly accessible introduction to the earliest colonial encounters in the Americas.

10. Salvaging the Delaware Big House Ceremony: The History and Legacy of Frank Speck's Collaboration with the Oklahoma Delaware

10. Salvaging the Delaware Big House CeremonyThe History and Legacy of Frank Speck's Collaboration with the Oklahoma Delaware Brice Obermeyer The Delaware Big House Ceremony was an annual religious event of thanksgiving and renewal that involved twelve days of prayer, dance, and song. Families would travel from their homes and camp on the grounds of the Big House Church for the duration of the observance. The church building was a dirt floor, roofed structure made of wood and bark. The image of the Mising, or spirit face, was carved on its interior posts. The last Big House Church to be built in such fashion stood along the western banks of the upper Caney River a few miles west of Copan, Oklahoma. The last ceremony held in the church west of Copan was in 1924, yet the Delaware did not give up efforts to hold the ceremony until 1945. Work continued after 1924 to revitalize the Delaware Big House Ceremony and three ceremonies held in 1944–45 were the result. In 1944, a structure of bark and canvas was erected on an allotment along Post Oak Creek just north of Dewey, Oklahoma, and celebrants performed an abbreviated ceremony. The ceremonies were organized by Charlie Webber with the help of several men among the Big House followers. The ceremony did not last the entire twelve days and the officiants lacked many of the ritual objects needed to perform the ceremony. While there were no Mising images present to witness the ceremony, the Delaware today remember those wartime Big House Ceremonies as their last. Documented here is the way in which the Big House adherents sought to keep the Big House Ceremony viable during the ceremony's interregnum between 1924 and 1944. The early decades of the twentieth century brought difficult times for the Delaware. The impacts of land loss, poverty, and waning interest among the younger generation made it clear to the Big House leaders that something had to be done in order to preserve their traditional faith. The Big House faithful soon found a strong ally in Frank Speck and the emerging discipline of American anthropology. While Speck sought to help record Delaware religion, the Delaware hoped to employ ethnography as a means to revitalize their spiritual beliefs. [End Page 184] This chapter describes such collaboration between Speck and the Oklahoma Delaware with a focus on reconstructing the local social context and emphasizing the Delawares' role in their own ethnographic project. Also discussed is the legacy of Speck's work with the Delaware in the anthropological literature and in contemporary Delaware society. Frank Speck's Collaborative Approach Speck's work produced a tremendous body of scholarship that now serves as the foundation for contemporary ethnology on the Eastern Woodlands. Speck did extensive research with the Algonquian and Iroquoian groups resident in or removed from northeastern North America (Blankenship 1991). His efforts were also responsible for enhancing the ethnographic collections of many museums in the northeastern United States (Medoff 1991). Speck's collaboration with Eastern Delaware of Oklahoma produced, among others, two foundational works on the Delaware Big House Ceremony (Speck 1931, 1937). As a student of Franz Boas, Speck's ethnographic work was salvage oriented. Speck believed that the aboriginal beliefs and practices of the American Indians were in declining usage and searched diligently to locate, record and preserve such indigenous lifeways. He thus wrote in the ethnographic present and sought to reconstruct American Indian life-ways as they would have existed prior to European contact. Such was the approach of ethnographers working with American Indians of the early to mid-twentieth century (Berkhofer 1979:62–69). It is not my intention to offer a critique of Speck's approach. Sufficient critical attention has been given elsewhere and the limitations of early American anthropology have been well established (Deloria 1969).1 Instead I will show that despite the limitations of early Americanist scholarship, there were beneficial elements that often go unnoticed. Most notable in Speck's method were the collaborative relationships that he developed with his American Indian consultants (Gleach 2002). While I see Speck's approach to ethnography as a collaboration, he did not produce what has become...

The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 (review)

Reviewed by: The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 James L. Ford The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600. By Richard Bowring. Cambridge University Press, 2005. 502 pages. Hardcover £85.00/$150.00. Richard Bowring has taken on the challenging task of writing, despite the more inclusive title, a history of Buddhism in Japan from its introduction in the sixth century to the beginning of the Tokugawa era. The author rightly observes that available overviews, including Charles Eliot's Japanese Buddhism (1935), Joseph M. Kitagawa's Religion in Japanese History (1966), and Daigan and Alicia Matsunaga's Foundation of Japanese Buddhism (1974), are notably dated. "There is clearly a need," Bowring writes in his preface, "for a new history of the subject" (p. xi). Although Bowring may have fallen short of providing some of the things one would hope an overview of Japan's Buddhist tradition would include, that is not to say that this volume is a failure or unimportant. Bowring himself, in the preface, anticipates some of the criticisms I will offer as well as notes the challenges he was sure to encounter when he embarked on this project. In many ways extraordinary, this volume must be understood for what it is and, perhaps also, what it is not. [End Page 580] The book is ordered chronologically and divided into four parts, each covering important eras of Japanese history up to 1600. The first deals with the introduction and establishment of Buddhism from the first half of the sixth century to the beginning of the Heian era (784). Chapters within this section cover the introduction of Buddhism from Paekche, its early conflict with native beliefs and practices, the close relation between Buddhism and the early state, and the establishment of powerful temple complexes in Nara. Part 2 spans from 800 to 1180, basically the Heian era, concluding with Taira no Shigehira's destruction of Tōdaiji and Kōfukuji (1180). Among other topics, Bowring highlights the growing influence of tantrism, including both its Tendai and Shingon variations, as well as the rise of devotionalism. Part 3 covers the Kamakura era (1180-1330) with key chapters on the debate over the exclusive nenbutsu, Chan and Zen Buddhism, and the emergence of Shinto as an independent tradition. Finally, part 4 extends from the fall of Go-Daigo to the death of Nobunaga (1330-1582). Three chapters review the political battles between the Northern and Southern courts (including religious elements thereof), the rise of Muromachi Zen, the end of the medieval era with the introduction of Christianity, and the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Although the vast majority of this study focuses on Buddhism, indigenous religious practices and beliefs are certainly not ignored. Chapter 8, in particular, offers a coherent analysis of the survival, indeed flourishing, of native jingi cults "largely thanks to a philosophical flexibility within Buddhism, which recognized the possibility of provisional truths." Bowring goes on to note that "Buddhism needed local gods to ground itself in new areas via these intermediaries, and in turn it provided local cults . . . with something of much greater significance, a universal context which became increasingly necessary if the divine right to rule was to be maintained" (p. 179). A close analysis follows of what has problematically been labeled Buddhist-Shinto syncretism and of the rise of national state shrines at Kamo and Ise. Despite the inclusion of these sections on the native cults and rise of Shinto, the overriding focus on Buddhism and the absence of any substantive discussion of Taoist, Confucian, and Chinese cosmological influences makes the title of this volume somewhat misleading. Bowring is also to be complemented for highlighting the rise of devotionalism (chapter 9) during the Heian era, an important element for understanding the later teachings of Hōnen and Shinran, in particular, that are so often anachronistically abstracted from their social and historical contexts. His inclusion of at least one representative of the established schools, Myōe, in an overview of the exclusive nenbutsu teachers is also noteworthy. In addition to an extensive section on Chan and Zen, Bowring also includes the reform efforts of Eison (1201-1290) at Saidaiji, Ippen (1239-1289), and Nichiren (1222-1282) during...

The Challenge of IEFA

THE Indian Education for All (IEFA) Act requires Montana teachers and faculty members to teach Indian history and culture at all levels, from kindergarten through college. Meeting the law's intent with regard to Montana's tribal histories is relatively easy. It will be a matter of compiling information about each tribe and integrating it into classroom instruction. Certainly that requires time, patience, and a lot of hard work, but it can be done. Materials are available from the eight tribal governments, the seven tribal colleges, the Office of Public Instruction, the campuses of the Montana University System, and private individuals and organizations. Much harder will be defining how teachers and faculty members effectively teach about the cultures of Montana's 12 tribes. Our challenge is presenting information in a way that honors the unique culture of each tribe. Salish, Kootenai, Blackfeet, Little Shell Chippewa, Cree, Chippewa, Gros Ventre, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Nakota, and Assiniboine (Fort Belknap and Fort Peck) cultures and languages are quite distinct from one another, so even schools on or near reservations will be teaching about tribal cultures that are different from their own. In addition, tribal peoples have a unique political status in the United States, so our educational materials must convey that as well. My concern is that instruction might end up trivializing highly complex cultural issues. For example, Indian culture is often presented through the arts, especially our traditional arts such as powwow dancing and beadwork. These visual representations are often the best known and most easily demonstrated aspects of a culture, but they are not the culture. Rather, they are a manifestation of a much broader and more complex set of value orientations. To present such a narrow cross section of a culture trivializes the richness and complexity of the lives of Native peoples. It does not begin to touch upon how our Native beliefs, attitudes and values, verbal and nonverbal language, and objects and artifacts affect our views of authority, relationships, action, and time. Our views tend to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from the values of mainstream American culture, and unfamiliarity sometimes breeds contempt. Educators and students must understand that, while Native perceptions of the world may be different, they are not deficient. The greater the breadth of our knowledge about all the peoples who live on this land, the greater the gain for our nation as a whole. Moreover, really exploring culture raises thorny issues about the culture of the American school system. Honestly engaging IEFA requires us to consider the political, economic, and power issues involved with including people who are culturally different. …

Walk My Country

Walk My Country Robyn Davidson (bio) Darwin is coming up somewhere ahead, in the dark. Thirty hours semicircling Earth to get here, in which time the moon has turned the right way up and summer has passed into winter. I check the internal landscape for signs of the physical happiness that, in the past, has accompanied the approach to my homeland, but there is nothing. Good. That is partly what this trip is for—to lay to rest the ghost of Australia and to pay my respects to an old man who died before I could say goodbye. The porthole cover snaps up, and there, framed to perfection, is the Southern Cross. Happiness punches me right in the sternum. The coastline creeps towards us, a line of darker darkness. There should be waves thundering on cliffs to overture such a landmass. But the sea is quiet, and the forest slips into it modestly. Did the first arrivals come across a quiet sea at night, not knowing whether that darkness ahead marked an island as small as the one they left behind, or another world? It is now generally agreed that the first human footprint appeared on terra Australis fifty thousand years ago, give or take several millennia. However, in Aboriginal belief, the ancestors were—and are—eternally present, and given that poetic and scientific truths need not be mutually exclusive, I have no trouble accepting both views. South of Darwin, the forest begins balding. Sand ridges form, like veins under the skin of an old woman's hand. I'm gazing down at ancient skin… or canvas, covered in dots and feathery rhapsodic layers of polymer, an Aboriginal, Western-desert painting of the kind that now fetches big money in international art markets. Nearly thirty years ago, I experienced a period of intense solitude in that landscape, a time that was to transform my life in ways I could never have predicted. I had arrived in Alice Springs, a frontier town in the dead centre of the continent, with nothing but a peculiar idea and the arrogant stubbornness of youth. The peculiar idea was to get myself some wild camels from the bush, train them to carry my gear, and then wander around the desert with them. I had no particular affection for camels but couldn't afford a four-wheel-drive. Besides, I wanted to walk my country, experience it at the pace that existed before mechanical speed violated our perception of time's relation to space. Most of all, I wanted to learn something [End Page 7] of the people who had translated the Australian landscape so elegantly and so successfully. I had never seen an Aborigine. They were as remote to me as the ancient Greeks. In 1977, after two years of preparation, I walked from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean across 2700 kilometres of "desert." The emptiness, so vast and frightening at first, turned into the original garden as soon as I learnt how to be in it. But like all grand passions, it demanded I give myself to it completely. That I stay. And that I could not do. An old Pitjantjatjara man accompanied me for a time. When I first met him, he was wearing a woman's slipper on his right foot and an enormous Adidas running shoe on his left. He was about 130 centimetres high and half blinded by trachoma, but he had what all the older Aboriginal people seem to have: a kind of rootedness, a gravitas, and a sense of humour that comes from being at home in the world. He stared up into my face, laughed, pointed to himself, and said, "Mister Eddy," his only two words of English, and then we headed west together, following, more or less, a segment of his own Dreaming story: the topographical features created by his ancestor, the original dingo man, at the beginning of time. Some part of me has never returned from that journey, so I often have the disconcerting sensation that an alien version of me, buried and shadowy, haunts my everyday life, mocking any attempt to be "normal." One version of me attends literary events in...

Change Over Time: The National Museum of the American Indian

Consisting of curves and nonlinear in conception, the five-story National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) symbolizes nature in the urban environment of Pantheon-like buildings that dominate Washington, D.C. An impressive sight, NMAI is where East meets West on the Atlantic seaboard. It reflects the history of indigenous peoples of this hemisphere, extending new cultural knowledge to foreign visitors from all parts of the world and to all non-indigenous wanting to learn about Native peoples. NMAI was designed to show how and why Native peoples hold nature to be integral to their lives and cultures. Seemingly out of place, NMAI is actually the only structure on the Smithsonian Mall that is in its natural element of the indigenous. In its distinct architectural form, resembling an off-white mesa indigenous to the Southwest, this abstract and mountain-like structure challenges visitors to entertain a different perspective, the perspective of the other side of Indian-white contact that began over five hundred years ago. NMAI is a political and cultural statement of conflict resolution allowing people to learn from native ideas, beliefs, and worldview. Ironically, NMAI occupies the last site on the Smithsonian Mall to celebrate the first Americans of this continent. NMAI has sixty thousand members, more than any other individual Smithsonian museum. The large and

The Early Toxicology of Physostigmine

Mid-19th century European visitors to Old Calabar, an eastern province of Nigeria, could not avoid becoming aware of native belief in the power of the seeds of a local plant to determine whether individuals were innocent or guilty of some serious misdemeanour. The seeds were those of a previously unknown legume and soon referred to as the ordeal bean of Old Calabar. Their administration was known locally as ‘chop nut’. Missionaries who arrived in Calabar in 1846 estimated that chop nut caused some 120 deaths annually and documented the course of poisoning. The latter information and samples of the beans rapidly found their way to Scotland, the home of the missionaries’ parent church, explaining why the early toxicology of physostigmine, quantitatively the most important of three active alkaloids in the beans, has such strong Scottish, predominantly Edinburgh, associations. However, it was 1855 before the first of many medical scientists, Robert Christison, a toxicologist of repute, investigated the effects of the beans to the extent of eating part of one himself and documenting the moderate, if not severe, consequences. A further 6 years were to pass before Balfour’s comprehensive botanical description of the bean plant appeared. It was he who named it Physostigma venenosum.

THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING PRACTICES IN THE DISEMPOWERMENT OF THE COAHUILTECAN INDIANS

This paper argues that a complex of accounting measures — account books, inventories of accumulated wealth, and detailed instructions for production performance — were used to inculcate Western values into the native population located at five Franciscan missions along the San Antonio River in New Spain (present-day Texas) from 1718 to 1794. Bolstered by the need to alleviate communications problems caused by extreme isolation, the missionaries constructed detailed mission documents that described the acquisition of scarce resources, reported the aggregation of material and spiritual mission wealth, and controlled daily production performance of the native population. In short, the resulting mission economic system, which held the Indians to certain notions of accountability, primarily by restricting their choices, nourished the Western view of income distribution based on effort. We propose that these procedures ultimately caused the Coahuiltecans to abandon their native beliefs, and gradually, to be absorbed into Spanish society. The 150 Coahuiltecan tribes ceased to exist as a distinct culture by the early 19th century. The exploitation and ultimate subjugation of the Coahuiltecan Indians parallels strikingly subsequent developments in Canada, Australia, and the Scottish Highlands.