Native Lifeways Research Articles

Vernacular Design: Alive and Alert

This article debates that vernacular design is not a social reflection, but a social operation that stems from revisiting indigenous intelligence and employing it to generate social power, which could establish a nature-culture balance. Such a balance is intended to respond to the local way of life and address different daily-life problems encountered by each individual. This direction differs from that of industrial design, which, by promoting uniformity, requires customers or users to adjust themselves and their lifestyles. Whereas industrial design focuses on mass production and creation of a unified mega-culture known as globalization, vernacular design aims to address individuals’ problems, drive their chosen way of life forward, and strive for sustainability. In other words, vernacular design responds to an individual’s needs in his or her own way of life and promotes knowledge sharing with every community member. In this system, community members are skilled designers who possess their own aesthetic vernacular and utilize public property as an asset for their designs. Aiming for sustainability, vernacular design progresses in four levels: 1) hybridizing, by modifying the function of a modern, mass-produced commodity; 2) maintaining indigenous identities to propel the native way of life; 3) common-pooling to benefit all community members collectively; and 4) devising a strategy to address social issues or to change public policies.

Challenging the Episteme with Storytelling: Learning without Limits the Native Way

Leslie Marmon Silko is an eminent writer among the Native Americans who is trying to resuscitate Native culture and reconstruct the identity of her people. In her novels like Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead, she has extensively written about the Native way of life. Her short stories are also an endeavour to construct the identity of her people. Due to her concern with the construction of the identity of her people, she often compares white institutions with the Native institutions. In her short story “Man to Bring the Rainclouds”, she compares the death rituals of her people with the Christian rituals and establishes that the Pueblo customs were deeply connected with the land. The current paper is a study of her short story “Humaweepi, The Warrior the Priest.” In the story, she compares the whites’ methods of educating the children to her people’s methods of educating the younger generation. She establishes in the story that the Pueblo way of educating the children was superior because it did not put any strain on the learner; rather the student learned everything without any stress or labour. Moreover, the Native system of education taught the learner about the importance of developing a bond with the natural world and hence trained the students to become eco-warriors.

"If you're down, you know, get up, be proud of yourself, go forward": Exploring Urban Southwest American Indian Individual Resilience.

The diverse American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) population suffers health inequities perpetuated by colonialism and post-colonialism. The urban AI/AN population is steadily increasing in part because of federal policies relocating AI/AN away from tribal lands. However, studies of AI/AN urban communities are rare, and efforts to understand and ameliorate health inequities in AI/AN communities typically emphasize deficits rather than capacities. Resilience is an important resource in this context but mainstream, rather than community-derived definitions of resilience, predominate. The present study used multi-investigator consensus analysis in a qualitative study to identify urban American Indian (AI) derived concepts and construct a definition of resilience. The study included 25 AI adults in four focus groups in three urban locales in the southwestern United States. Four resilience themes emerged: 1) AIs built strength through toughness and wisdom; 2) the value of traditional 'lifeways' (i.e., elements of traditional culture that help people navigate their journey through life); 3) the importance of giving and receiving help; and 4) the interconnectedness of Native lifeways, family relationships, and tribal and urban communities. Themes overlap with extant resilience conceptualizations but also provide unique insights into structure and function of urban AI resilience in the Southwest United States.

ALASKA NATIVE SUCCESSFUL AGING IN NORTHWEST ALASKA: AGING IN A GOOD WAY STARTS WITH YOUR FAMILY

Abstract Alaska Natives (AN) view aging from a holistic perspective. One of the challenges of researching with cultural groups is the lack of data, or research, on culture and aging. This research explored successful aging from an AN perspective. A community-based participatory research (CBPR) model was used to engage participants at every stage of the research process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 AN men and 25 women. Kleinman’s Explanatory Model of Illness was adapted to gain a sense of the beliefs about aging and to guide the data analysis to establish an AN understanding of successful aging or attaining “Eldership” in Northwest Alaska. The foundation of the Norton Sound southern sub-region Model of Successful Aging is family, which contributed to Elders’ feelings of emotional well-being, ability to engage in their Native Way of life, maintain their physical health, and continue spiritual practices.

Alaska Native successful ageing in Northwest Alaska: how family impacts how one ages in a good way

ABSTRACT Since time immemorial Alaska Natives (AN) lived and aged well, yet today they experience high rates of illness and lower access to care because of colonisation. Aand this research explores successful ageing from an AN perspective or what it means to achieve “Eldership” in the rural Northwest Alaska. A community-based participatory research approach was used to engage participants at every stage of the research process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 AN men and 25 women and the interviews were professionally transcribed. Kleinman’s explanatory model served as the foundation of the questionnaire to gain a sense of the beliefs about ageing and guide the thematic analysis to establish an AN understanding of successful ageing. The foundation of the Norton Sound southern sub-region Model of Successful Ageing is the reciprocal relationship between Elders and family which enables Elders to access meaningful activities, including Native ways of life, physical health, spirituality, and emotional well-being. Community-based interventions should foster opportunities for Elders to share their Native way of life alongside family and community members, which will enable them to remain physically active, maintain healthy emotional well-being, continue engaging in spiritual practices, and contribute to the health and well-being of families.

Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History

Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History

Memories of Earth and Sea: An Ethnographic History of the Islands of Chiloé

Memories of Earth and Sea: An Ethnographic History of the Islands of Chiloé

Gerotranscendence and Alaska Native Successful Aging in the Aleutian Pribilof Islands, Alaska

The population of the United States is aging and by 2045 it is projected that approximately 1 in every 6 Alaskans will be 65+. Delivering healthcare and meeting the needs of older Alaskans in their community is critical to supporting healthy aging and community sustainability. Alaska Native (AN) Elders are underserved with very few studies providing an emic perspective on their experience aging. This research opens the door and allows us a glimpse of the AN Elder experience of aging: the values, beliefs, and behaviors that allow them to age well. This study highlights the characteristics and activities of AN Elders in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands to further develop the model of AN successful aging. There are many theories of aging and this study explores a cross-cultural understanding of gerotranscendence - the personal and interpersonal changes that result from successful aging or achieving Eldership. This study interviewed Elders in two communities of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands region. Using 22 standardized questions based on the explanatory model, researchers facilitated discussion of what it means to be an Elder and age successfully. Employing thematic analysis, interview transcripts were analyzed for themes to organize the data. Themes were organized into 5 core elements of successful aging with specific emphasis on values, beliefs, and behaviors that were protective and helped them adapt to aging-related changes. Interview content, meaning, and themes support the four elements of the AN model of successful aging developed by Lewis (The Gerontologist, 51(4), 540-549, 2011): Mental and Emotional Wellbeing, Spirituality, Purposefulness and Engagement, and Physical Health. Elders’ stories highlight the importance of reflection, personal growth, and psychosocial development. Elders who more strongly identified with their role in the community described how their perspective had changed and they shared stories that emphasized culture, connection to the land, and enjoyment of daily activities that resulted in increased life satisfaction. Elders provided clear evidence that they experienced aspects of gerotranscendence, which Tornstam (Journal of Aging Studies, 11(2), 143-154, 1997) categorized as the cosmic dimension, the self, and social and personal relationships. Elders adapting to aging-related changes and embracing their role as an Elder provided the greatest evidence of gerotranscendence - they developed new perspectives on life, took on new roles within the community, and experienced a shift in mindset that reinforced the importance of culture, tradition, and the Native Way of Life. This research allowed AN Elders to share their experiences, define successful aging, and expand the concept of Eldership to include changes in mindset, values, and relationships with themselves and others. The study is a framework to help us better understand the experiences of AN Elders aging successfully and the wisdom they wish to impart to others to help them learn to live healthy and meaningful lives.

Wood Products for Cultural Uses: Sustaining Native Resilience and Vital Lifeways in Southeast Alaska, USA

Ongoing revitalization of the >5000-year-old tradition of using trees for vital culture and heritage activities including carving and weaving affirms Alaska Native resilience. However, support for these sustained cultural practices is complicated by environmental and political factors. Carving projects typically require western redcedar (Thuja plicata) or yellow cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) trees more than 450 years of age—a tree life stage and growth rate inconsistent with current even-aged forest management strategies. Herein, we qualitatively assess the significance of wood products to rural communities and Indigenous cultures with implications for natural heritage sustainability. In partnership with Alaska Native Tribes, we engaged local youth programs to lead community discussions throughout southeast Alaska to provide specificity to the suite of cultural activities linked to regional forest lands. Results from 58 discussions across 11 southeast Alaska communities (primarily Alaska Native participants) highlighted the cultural importance of forest products including totem poles, dugout canoes, longhouses, woven hats, and woven baskets. Findings indicated spiritual well-being, health, education, tourism, and livelihood significance attributed to these products. Participant-suggested management strategies for increasing supply and expanding access to trees on public lands included: engaging local artisans in forest planning, selecting and delivering specific trees to roads as part of ongoing timber sales, allowing bark removal prior to forest-timber sales, simplifying the tree-acquisition permit process, and setting aside cultural forest groves to sustain trees seven generations into the future. By facilitating discussions, this study fostered relevant place-based youth and community engagement, benefiting youth and enhancing community knowledge transfer while simultaneously summarizing the significance of forest products for resilient culture and heritage activities. Forest management plans aiming to support Alaska Native lifeways may benefit from improved understanding of Indigenous perspectives and worldviews; designation of “culture market values” and “culture targets” can help deliver a broad array of ecosystem services.

Divining the Woman of Endor: African Culture, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Biblical Translation by J. Kabamba Kiboko

Reviewed by: Divining the Woman of Endor: African Culture, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Biblical Translation by J. Kabamba Kiboko Alinda Damsma Keywords African culture, history of magic, witchcraft, colonialism, postcolonialism, Sanga culture, Christianity, divination, divinatory magic, Basanga people, 1 Samuel 28, Central Africa, Kisanga Bible, Bible, biblical magic j. kabamba kiboko. Divining the Woman of Endor: African Culture, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, and the Politics of Biblical Translation. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 644. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. Pp. xxxii + 288. One of the most significant biblical texts dealing with female divination is 1 Samuel 28:3–25, the story about King Saul's visit to a female necromancer in Endor. However, misconceptions about "the woman of Endor" have dominated the text's long reception history: she has often been (mis)labelled as a witch. In this monograph biblical scholar Jeanne Kabamba Kiboko, who is also a clergywoman and Bible translator, discusses these persistent misconceptions and how they were passed on to African culture through the colonial period, with far-reaching consequences for the mission church's attitude towards indigenous divinatory practices. In the prologue the reader learns more about the author's background: she was born into the Sanga (also known as Basanga) people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her relatives were devout Roman Catholics but also honoured their native way of life and their ancient religious traditions, including divinatory practices, which were condemned by the church. Yet, despite the deep-rooted, negative attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward divination, Kiboko already observed early on the striking similarities between the culture of the Hebrew Bible and the Sanga culture in which she was immersed, especially with regard to the positive use of divination. In this study the author demonstrates her thorough understanding of divination, witchcraft, and attitudes toward them from ancient times to the present day. She acquaints the reader with divinatory practices in the ancient Near East during the second and first millennia BCE, thus providing a helpful background for our understanding of 1 Samuel 28. She also examines the anti-divinatory sentiments in medieval to modern Christian Europe which the colonial missionizing agents brought with them to Africa. Within the African context, Kiboko mainly focuses on the divinatory practices of her own Basanga people. She explains how the mission church failed to distinguish witchcraft from the positive use of divination in the Basanga way of life, thus condemning all types of divination as demonic practices. [End Page 140] With her postcolonial literary investigation of 1 Samuel 28 Kiboko compellingly demonstrates not only the multicultural spiritual challenges which she had to face, but also the linguistic challenges: the vocabulary of divination used in the translations that were popular in the region, such as the French La Sainte Bible (LSG) and the Kisanga Bible, served well in the colonial context, but it no longer serves the complex situation which the church currently faces in Central Africa (where women, men, and children are still being persecuted as "witches"). For example, according to the worldview of the Basanga people, there are bad spirits, such as the mufu, an angry, haunting ghost. In the Kisanga Bible the Hebrew word Elohim, which refers to Samuel's spirit summoned by the woman of Endor, is rendered as mufu. However, due to the choice of the term mufu, with its negative connotations, this entire episode in 1 Samuel 28 is seen as demonic in the Kisanga Bible. In fact, it is Kiboko's thesis that the vocabulary of divination in this passage (and throughout the Bible) has been widely mistranslated, not only in the LSG and in the Kisanga Bible, but also in the authorized English translations and many other translations and scholarly writings. Kiboko subsequently exposes several cases of mistranslation through her word study of a number of key terms within the rich vocabulary of divination in the Hebrew Bible. Although not all of these terms are used in 1 Samuel 28, she argues that their examination is essential for understanding the inner biblical conflict surrounding acts of divination. She subsequently examines the history and social context of these terms in ancient times and demonstrates that each...

Rooted Indigenous Core Values: Culturally Appropriate Curriculum and Methods for Civic Education Reflective of Native American Culture and Learning Styles

This article provides an overview of the Navajo (Diné) K’e model and associated Indigenous and multitribal concepts that the Native American Community Academy (NACA) teachers, curriculum directors, instructional team members, programing mentors (aunties and uncles), community partners, staff, and school leaders draw from to inform how they design and implement curricula across grade levels and content. This practice guides the framework for culturally responsive curriculum at NACA and the inherent sovereignty of Native people by providing civic engagement and education through the lens of Indigeneity. K’e is a cornerstone of civic Indigenous education that is grounded in the core values of Native culture, Native way of life, and Indigenous knowledge. The fundamental idea is to restore relationships and harmony rather than to assign guilt and punishment. Students at NACA practice this restorative practice that reflects their Native, multitribal, and multicultural identities. This article is sectioned into four parts in order to resemble the sacred directions that drive the innate core values rooted in ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Indigenous perspectives as applied to civic engagement and education for children and youth in a multicultural society. It is also comprised of short student portraiture interviews with students and teachers and an overview of NACA-Inspired Schools across our network.

Sugarcane Sakadas: The Corporate Production of the Filipino on a Hawai‘i Plantation

ABSTRACTThis article traces a genealogy of “Filipino” ethnicity to plantations and labor management from the nineteenth century to 1913. It argues that the Filipino on Hawaiʻi, later known as sakadas, emerged through the labor management techniques of sugar plantations and other state and private collaborators. Financial institutions, such as banks and accounting offices, used ethnicity to manage Ilokano (Northern Philippine lowlands peoples) migrant workers, who enjoyed relatively high mobility by virtue of their American colonial status. These institutions drew upon racial regimes developed through nineteenth-century Spanish agriculture, which generated an inland peasantry through the dispossession of their native lifeways.

Campus-Based Ecotourism: A Case Study on the Power of Local Ecotourism

Academic campuses across the Great Plains can serve as landscapes for teaching and learning about native flora of cultural importance with regard to food, medicine, and lifeways. Campus visitors (tourists) and local community members could benefit from more place-based understandings of how indigenous plants provide nourishment of the mind, body, and spirit to the people of the Plains. In an effort to educate and engage local community, the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) Native American Studies program collaborated with UNO's Service-Learning Academy to develop an academic course aimed to support the development and maintenance of community-based indigenous gardens. This course proved to be a unique way of cultivating ecotourism through engaged teaching and learning outside of the classroom. This case study, testing ecotourism theory, explores local ecotourism in a service-learning course and examines how the development of campus-based indigenous gardens can serve to protect and promote Native lifeways. This article presents the ways in which campus-community and outside visitors' engagement with indigenous gardens promotes better understanding of local Native cultures by bringing diverse peoples, perspectives, practices, and pedagogies together through an ecotourism lens.

The Ethics of Facing Western Notions in Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case

Taking as a basis Søren Kierkegaard’s narrative strategy of attack and defence, this paper will analyse the representation of western civilization in connection with the worldview of the native people living in a leper colony in Belgian Congo in Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case. I will examine concretely the way in which Greene attacks in the novel the hegemonic structure of the European colonizers, which both ignores and imposes itself on the African native society, considering it a no-structure. Additionally, I will study the cases of the priests in the leper colony and of doctor Colin, characters that, being on the frontier between both value systems, become cultural translators and thus make communication possible. These characters acknowledge that the native way of life is as legitimate as the European and represent the possibility of an empathic side of western civilization. In contrast with the attack mentioned above, with the priests and Dr Colin Greene defends the European community living in the area. Through the use of the narrative strategy of attack and defence, therefore, contradictory messages are inserted in the text so that the readers take an active role solving the paradoxes they find in their reading. Finally, I will focus on the main protagonist, Querry, whose internal journey starts with his contact with Deo Gratias, a member of the native society, and whose spiritual evolution throughout the novel cannot be explained without his experience with the native culture.

CROPPING IN AN AGE OF CAPTIVE TAKING: EXPLORING EVIDENCE FOR UNCERTAINTY AND FOOD INSECURITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT

Engagement in sustained encounters with colonial actors had long-lasting demographic, social, and political consequences for Native American inhabitants of Southeastern North America during the colonial period (AD 1670–1783). Less clear is whether Native peoples who did not regularly trade with colonists also felt the destabilization experienced by more closely affiliated groups. This article explores Native lifeways in the seventeenth-century Eno River valley of the North Carolina Piedmont, a context for which archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence have produced divergent narratives. While extant archaeological findings suggest that daily life from 1650 to 1680 continued virtually unchanged from the preceding Late Woodland period, ethnohistoric accounts indicate that this area was victimized by Native slavers who abducted countless women and children. Seeking to reconcile these narratives, I conducted a diachronic analysis of botanical remains and architecture. Archaeobotanical data reveal that Jenrette site (AD 1650–1680) occupants adopted foodways that differed significantly from those of their Late Woodland predecessors, while architectural evidence indicates a brief village occupation. I argue that Eno River valley inhabitants introduced risk-averse subsistence practices that would have aided in coping with the threat and consequences of slave raiding and that these practices occurred within a social climate of fear and uncertainty that is documented ethnohistorically.

Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America by Julius H. Rubin

Reviewed by: Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America by Julius H. Rubin Sarah Koenig Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America. By Julius H. Rubin. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. xxiv, 248. $55.00, ISBN 978-1-4962-0187-4.) Recent studies of Protestant missions to Native Americans have emphasized Native resistance to conversion and acculturation. By contrast, Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America focuses on the elements that united white missionaries with the few Cherokees, Ojibwes, Osages, and other Native peoples who underwent conversion. Julius H. Rubin argues that both missionaries and Native converts were shaped by shared understandings of evangelical selfhood, including an intensive personal piety marked by recurring cycles of melancholy and rapture, the struggle to cultivate a spirit of "disinterested benevolence," and a "democratic personality" based on the spiritual equality of all believers (pp. 5, 131). Taken together, these figures should be seen as "representative lives who forged a distinctive evangelical religious personhood and identity founded upon religious values" (p. 4). The first three chapters address white Protestant missionaries working on behalf of Presbyterian, Congregational, and Dutch Reformed organizations. In the vein of his earlier work on religious melancholy, Rubin highlights the sense of inadequacy, sinfulness, and disappointment that marked many of these missionaries' lives. Missionaries to Native peoples entered their fields full of optimism, shaped by millennial hopes and the urgency of saving "perishing heathens" from spiritual desolation. However, their optimism was soon tempered by rampant disease, the rarity of Native conversions, and the practical difficulties of running model Christian homes and schools. Rubin includes a discussion of mental asylums to illustrate the physical and mental tolls of missionary life. The missionary known only as "Miss D," for instance, served for only a brief period before spending the rest of her life under full-time care for apparent mental illness caused by malaria. More exploration of nineteenth-century understandings of mental illness would have enriched this discussion. Nevertheless, Rubin offers a vivid depiction of the struggles of missionaries who tried (and often failed) to meet the idealized standards of personal piety and missionary devotion modeled by earlier Protestant heroes like David Brainerd. The second half of the book examines how Osage, Cherokee, and Ojibwe converts adopted these same elements of evangelical selfhood. The majority of these converts hailed from communities that were already liminal in some way: Osage children sent to mission schools, Cherokees who had embraced U.S. agents' "plan of civilization," and members of mixed white and Ojibwe families (p. 121). Rubin argues that although converts such as Catharine Brown (Cherokee) and Jane Schoolcraft (Ojibwe) sought to preserve certain elements [End Page 989] of Native history and nationhood, they otherwise wholeheartedly rejected Native lifeways and embraced missionaries' modes of piety and self-understanding. This conclusion runs contrary to the claims of scholars including Theda Perdue and Michael D. McNally, and Rubin needs to do more here to support it. While he acknowledges that Native peoples were not blank slates, he tells us little about potential affinities between Native and white Christian religious understandings. One wonders, for instance, whether Brown's address of white Christians as "sister and brother" was solely the result of Brown's new "democratic personality," or whether such language also reflected Cherokee understandings of fictive kinship (p. 131). It is also surprising that Rubin does not more fully explore the significance of the phrase "perishing heathens." Many white leaders, including architect of the Trail of Tears Andrew Jackson, were convinced that Native peoples were doomed to extinction. How did this concept shape these missionaries' and converts' interactions? Perishing Heathens is most successful as a study of missionary culture. Scholars of missions and Native America will find Perishing Heathens to be a thought-provoking, if not entirely cohesive, study of the habits of life and mind that both missionaries and Native converts were expected to cultivate. Evangelical ideals often proved unattainable, but the struggle to live up to them defined the antebellum missionary experience. Sarah Koenig Kalamazoo College Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

More than a Façade: The Kenekuk Religion Revisited

More than a FaçadeThe Kenekuk Religion Revisited Matthew Garrett (bio) Key Words Kansas, Kickapoo, prayer sticks, spirituality Nearly 160 years have passed since the death of Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet. He led a band of Great Lakes Indians in Illinois and Kansas from the 1820s until smallpox claimed his life in 1852. He is most noted for his pacifist resistance to relocation and encroaching Americans. Historians have examined Kenekuk in a handful of articles, chapters, and one autobiography, and almost uniformly depicted him as a pragmatist. The Prophet's sole biographer defined Kenekuk's religion first and foremost as a tool to resist dispossession and defined his legacy as "helping his followers to adjust to white society and retain their lands, without resorting to warfare or losing their identity as Indians."1 The Prophet constructed a new religion and culture designed to mimic elements of Christianity and Western "civilization" as part of a conscious strategy to peacefully resist dispossession. This portrayal of the religion as an "outwardly" adaptation often suggests an empty façade and discounts the deeper impact of the experience.2 Other authors have echoed this interpretation.3 This approach limits the validity of the Kickapoos' newfound spirituality by defining it by its relation to encroaching whites and not for its own merits and meaning to adherents. The question remains, "What did the Kenekuk religion mean to the Kickapoos?" Determining meaning can be difficult, particularly in a community with few records and no modern adherents. The Kenekuk religion quickly declined after Kenekuk's death, and the surviving documentation is limited and highly filtered through the interpretations of white observers. Most firsthand witnesses in the nineteenth century attended to the Kickapoos as Methodist, Presbyterian, or Catholic missionaries. Sarah Carter's work on unrelated Methodist tracts reveals how such missionaries commonly misinterpreted Native lifeways as either [End Page 293] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Artist George Catlin visited the Kickapoos at Fort Leavenworth in 1830, where the prophet likely sat for this portrait. Catlin described him as "a very shrewd and talented man." Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison Jr. [End Page 294] "irreligious," "misguided," or even "devilish" to reaffirm Euro-American cultural and religious superiority. Others fixated on perceived doctrinal parallels to Christianity—sin, atonement, immortality of the soul—as indicators of some liminal status en route to an eventual conversion that also reaffirmed development theory.4 The same is true of missionaries who visited Kenekuk: some perceived him as a rival whom they criticized as savage; others believed his message served as a valuable precursor to the Kickapoos' eventual conversion to a more correct Christian church. Their records are central to any interpretation of the Kenekuk religion but are clearly limited and must be moderated by historic and ethnographic context. Speculation by outsiders—then and now—easily lends itself to accusations of white shamanism; nevertheless, difficult historical questions linger about the meaning of Kenekuk's religion.5 Far from claiming exclusive interpretive privilege, this article explores one possible meaning of the Kenekuk religion by exploring its cultural and societal impact on adherents. Decades ago Clifford Geertz called for an emphasis on "cultural dimensions of religious analysis" that both examined "the system of meanings" as well as how they related to "social-structural and psychosocial processes."6 Geertz pointed to the interplay between theology and lived religion, as manifest through the shifting interpretations of symbols, ethos, and worldview. His rally cry led to a shift beyond the dogmatic and into the experience of religion. Lawrence Sullivan answered that charge in Native Religions as he sought to reframe the study of indigenous American spirituality to include both traditional exploration dogma as well as an emphasis on "the religious responses they inspire in individuals and communities."7 This autochthonous approach avoids the longstanding mistake of obviating the essence of Native American spirituality with the longstanding Western fixation on theology. Anthropologist Jordan Piper explained, "Because Christianity has traditionally placed a primary value on belief, belief has become central to the Western understanding of religion. . . . However, in most of the world's religions, behavior is accorded more concern than belief."8 Barre Toelken likewise...

Built Form and Culture: Italian Transnational Houses in Australia

Accordingly to Wagner, “Dwellings stand as the concrete expressions of a complex interaction among cultural skills and norms, climatic conditions and the potentialities of natural materials”. This study, beginning with an enquiry into the way trans-national houses are the physical expression of interacting cultural factors, provides a theoretical framework grounded on cross-cultural studies for understanding the way cultural needs have influenced the form of the archetypal post WWII ‘house on a quarter-acre block’ built in Brisbane by Italian migrants. The findings reveal that while the architectural form of the Italian Trans-national houses built in Brisbane is influenced by the need to continue architectural cultural traditions in the host country, the spatial distribution of the artifact was influenced by socio-cultural factors and urban fabric, from both the native and hosting built environment, in the attempt of re-establishing and enhancing the native way of life.

Feeding family and ancestors: Persistence of traditional Native American lifeways during the Mission Period in coastal Southern California

This study examines the role of plant foods in domestic and ceremonial contexts at a Native American Gabrieliño/Tongva village occupied during the Spanish Mission Period in coastal southern California and highlights the remarkable persistence of traditional practices. Prior perspectives of the Mission Period have stressed that Native lifeways were quickly and profoundly disrupted in areas near newly established Spanish missions in California. This study reveals that despite the unprecedented changes associated with Spanish colonization, Native Americans within the Los Angeles Basin continued to emphasize native plant foods during mortuary events, mourning ceremonies, and feasting. Food, especially during ritual events, is a medium that cements the community together and reinforces social networks. By continuing the traditional emphasis on local wild plants, along with selective use of new introduced domesticated plants, food remained an important agency of cultural identity that helped the Gabrieliño/Tongva to maintain and reinforce social relationships during a period of dramatic culture change.

Four Deaths: The Near Destruction of Western Oregon Tribes and Native Lifeways, Removal to the Reservation, and Erasure from History

Four Deaths: The Near Destruction of Western Oregon Tribes and Native Lifeways, Removal to the Reservation, and Erasure from History