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• Current

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Type: educational

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Status: I recommend

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Authors: Peter N. Jones Marie L. McLaughlin Zitkala-Sa

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Tags: american native legends indian myths lakota oral Sioux traditions

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Description: Oral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native American cosmology. NotOral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native American cosmology. Not only have they been – and continue to be – an essential part of handing down Native American customs, norms, beliefs, and cultural histories, but they also form a communal mythic discourse. This discourse is not a “fixed text,” but rather a dynamic process of interactive relations that are developed over generations of experience, and passed from relation to relation and generation to generation. In this sense, the traditional structures of mythic discourse serve an integrative function: to form a coherent basis for communal identity in terms of a shared set of fundamental ideas and beliefs expressed in multiple forms.

The oral traditions and myths recorded in this book are part of the communal mythic discourse of the Lakota Sioux people. Originally collected and recorded at the close of the nineteenth century by two Native language speakers – Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala Sa – these oral traditions provide some of the least distorted or colonially disrupted examples of the Lakota Sioux communal mythic discourse. Containing over 40 oral traditions, Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths brings together into a single volume these remarkable myths and legends.

Edited and with a forward by Peter N. Jones, Ph.D., Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths is a welcome and refreshing addition to the literature. Once again the beauty, depth, and knowledge contained within the Lakota Sioux oral traditions can speak for themselves....

2009-06-11

 

• Current

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Type: educational

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Status: favorite

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Author: Moondancer and Strong Woman

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Tags: history american new native England, anthropology, americans, indians, indigenous peoples,

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Description: Very few books on the history and culture of the southern New England Native peoples have beenVery few books on the history and culture of the southern New England Native peoples have been written by the Natives themselves. Standard academic books read like a clinical autopsy of a dead culture from many years ago. Contrary to this, A Cultural History of the Native Peoples of Southern New England provides an understanding of the ways, customs, and language of the southern New England American Indians from the Native's perspective. For the first time, a book written about the Native American peoples of southern New England is written by the Natives themselves. Incorporating voices of modern Elders and other Natives to the historic records of the 1500s and 1600s, everything about the beauty, power, and richness of their culture has been included. Sections of the book cover appearance, language, family and relations, religion, the body and senses, marriage, sickness, war, games, hunting, and much more. The proud and fiercely independent Native American peoples of southern New England once walked tall and proud on this land. With this book, they are now beginning to walk tall again. ...

2007-11-25

 

• Current

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Type: scientific

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Status: I recommend

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Author: Peter N. Jones

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Tags: american great native spirit americans, indians, basin, cave, clovis, folsom holocene, indigenous, kennewick man, nez paiute, perce, plateau, pleistocene, yakama,

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Description: In this eagerly awaited book, the cultural anthropologist Peter N. Jones brings fifteen yearsIn this eagerly awaited book, the cultural anthropologist Peter N. Jones brings fifteen years and over twenty-five projects to bear on one of the more controversial questions in contemporary American anthropology and American Indian studies. Are contemporary American Indian tribes of the American West culturally affiliated with the people who crossed over from Asia over 10,000 years ago? Have American Indians in the Plateau and Great Basin lived in their homeland for thousands of years as their oral traditions affirm? These are some of the questions he considers in Respect for the Ancestors.

In 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River a 9,300-year old skeleton was found that would become the impetus for the first legal assault on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The Kennewick Man, as it came to be called, put to test whether the American Indian tribes of the area were culturally affiliated with the skeleton as they claim and their oral traditions affirm, or whether the skeleton was affiliated with a people who are no longer present. At the same time, another 9,000-year old skeleton was found in the storage facility of the Nevada State Museum, where it had gone unnoticed for the past 50 years. Like the Kennewick Man, the Spirit Cave Mummy also brought to fore the question of cultural affiliation between contemporary American Indian tribes of the western Great Basin and those people who resided in the area during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.

Cultural anthropologist Peter N. Jones tackles these contentious questions in this landmark study, Respect for the Ancestors. For the first time in a single work, the question of cultural affiliation between the present-day American Indians of the American West and the people of the distant past is examined using multiple lines of evidence. Out of this comprehensive study, a picture of continuous cultural evolution and adaptation between the peoples of the ancient past and those of the present-day emerges from the evidence. Further, important implications for the field of anthropology are discussed as a result of this benchmark study.

Anyone working in the American West or with American Indians and other indigenous cultures will benefit from this book....

2007-11-25