When first published in 1988, this classic study was the first to relate the dynamics of the Maasai age organisation to the tensions within the family. Together, these provide the twin strands of a man's career and, opposed ritually, reflecting a fundamental ambivalence in Maasai thought. The analysis is illustrated with extensive case material from the the Matapato, selected for this study as a typical Maasai group.

What role do indigenous religions play in today's world?
Beyond Primitivism is a complete appraisal of indigenous religions - faiths integrally connected to the cultures in which they originate, as distinct from global religions of conversion - as practiced across America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific today. At a time when local traditions across the world are colliding with global culture, it explores the future of indigenous faiths as they encounter modernity and globalization. Beyond Primitivism argues that indigenous religions are not irrelevant in modern society, but are dynamic, progressive forces of continuing vitality and influence. Including essays on Haitian vodou, Korean shamanism, and the Sri Lankan 'Wild Man', the contributors reveal the relevance of native religions to millions of believers worldwide, challenging the perception that indigenous faiths are vanishing from the face of the globe.

This book focuses on the inequities that are persistently and disproportionately severe for Indigenous peoples. Gender and racial based inequities span from the home life to Indigenous women's wellness-including physical, mental, and social health. The conundrum of how and why Indigenous women-many of whom historically held respected and even held sacred status in many matrilineal and female-centered communities-now experience the highest rates of gendered based violence is focal to this work. Unlike Western European and colonial contexts, Indigenous societies tended to be organized in fundamentally distinct ways that were woman-centered and where gender roles and values were reportedly more egalitarian, fluid, flexible, inclusive, complementary, and harmonious. Understanding how Indigenous gender relations were targeted as a tool of patriarchal settler colonization and how this relates to women more broadly can be a key to unlocking gender liberation-a catalyst for readers to become 'gender AWAke.' Living gender AWAke encompasses living in alignment with agility (AWA) with clear awareness of how gender and other sociostructural factors affect daily life, as well as how to navigate such factors. To live in alignment, is to live from ones' center and in accordance with one's authentic self, with agility, by nimbly responding to life's constantly shifting situations. This empirically grounded work extends and deepens the Indigenist framework of historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence (FHORT) by delving deep into the resilience, transcendence, and wellness components of FHORT while centering gender. Understanding the changing gender roles for Indigenous peoples over time fosters decolonization more broadly by enabling greater understanding of how sexism and misogyny hurt people across personal and political spheres. This understanding can foster the process of becoming gender AWAke by identifying and dismantling of sexism and by becoming decolonized from prescriptive gender roles that inhibit living in alignment with one's true or authentic self. Readers will gain: a research-based approach linking historical oppression, gender-based inequities, and violence against Indigenous women understanding of how patriarchal colonialism undermines all genders a tool to dismantle sexism more broadly pathways to become Gender AWAke through the understanding of Indigenous women's resilience and transcendence

The western steppelands of Central Eurasia, stretching from the Danube, through the modern Ukraine and southern Russia, to the Caspian, have historically been the meeting ground of Inner Asian pastoral nomads and the agrarian societies of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. This volume deals, firstly, with the interaction of the nomads with their sedentary neighbours - the Kievan Rus' state and the medieval polities of Transcaucasia, Georgia in particular - in the period from the 6th century to the advent of the Mongols. Second, it looks at questions of nomadic ethnogenesis (Oghuz, Hungarian, Qipchaq), at the evolution of nomadic political traditions and the heritage of the Turk empire, and at aspects of indigenous nomadic religious traditions together with the impact of foreign religions on the nomads - notably the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. A number of articles focus on the Qipchaqs, a powerful confederation of complex Inner Asian origins that played a crucial role in the history of Christian Eastern Europe and Transcaucasia and the Muslim world between the 11th and 13th centuries.

This work argues that due to domestic blockages presented to them in their respective countries, the Amazonian indigenous peoples organized via transnational networks. Through a comparative historical analysis of five Ecuadorian Amazonian indigenous organisations and two transnational Amazonian social movement organisations, the author illustrates the process of transnational collective action and its outcomes.

This book serves as a much-needed source of information on the social and health issues that impact the health of Native American women in the United States, accompanied by invaluable historical, cultural, and other contextual data about this sociocultural group. Health and Social Issues of Native American Women is the first book that specifically explores and discusses health and related social issues within the world of Native American women, providing strong historical and cultural perspectives as well as other contextual information that is often missing or misrepresented in other works about Native American women. Comprising contributions from mostly Native American women scholars, the work presents key background information on native women's health, health care delivery systems, and sociocultural history, and its chapters address the changing role of native women in Alaska and other parts of Indian country. Each author taps her specific area of expertise and knowledge to spotlight specific native women's health problems, such as nutrition, aging, domestic violence, diabetes, and substance abuse.

This first volume is a compilation of numerous essays by Douglas on the Lele in the Belgian Congo covering a fifteen year period. There are early indications of Douglas's cultural imagination and written expression that were to make her works accessible and relevant to a western readership of non-anthropologists. The intellectural tools and examples she gained from Africanist ethnography continue to serve her explorations of European and American society.

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Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahas, they converted him. He shows the slow, meticulous steps by which he gradually mastered their language and his gradual realisation that its unusual nature closely reflected its speakers' startlingly original perceptions of the world. Everett describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Piraha language opened up a new way of understanding how language works in our minds and in our lives, and that this way was utterly at odds with Noam Chomsky's universally accepted linguistic theories. The perils of passionate academic opposition were then swiftly conjoined to those of the Amazon in a debate whose outcome has yet to be won. Everett's views are most recently discussed in Tom Wolfe's bestselling The Kingdom of Speech. Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.

With no written alphabet, records of the Southwest Native Americans were kept in the form of either petroglyphs or pictographs on rock surfaces. By examining their symbolism, we are able to gain significant insight of their existence, a deeper understanding of their spiritual and ceremonial beliefs, and a glimpse into their daily lives. Hundreds of such sites exist and are scattered throughout the world with some of the most artistic ones located in the Mountainair, New Mexico, region. Today, this area is referred to as the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument and the "gateway to ancient cities."

"Stake[s] out a position that will affect future discussions of the emergence of chiefdoms. . . . promises to greatly increase our understanding of the emergence of inequality and institutionalized leadership positions."--John Scarry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill These compelling essays about Native American chiefs and their rise to power break new ground in the study of chiefdoms and their origins. Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists bring up to date the information about many complex chiefdoms that flourished throughout the Americas, in which numerous villages and regions were ruled single-handedly by hereditary chiefs. The book's focus on the leadership of chieftains offers a new perspective for examining the development of complex chiefly societies in the Americas. The geographically and chronologically diverse case studies highlight the dynamics of the temporary chieftaincy and the development of permanent, hereditary chiefdoms. Contents Foreword by Neil L. Whitehead Preface by Elsa M. Redmond Introduction: The Dynamics of Chieftaincy and the Development of Chiefdoms, by Elsa M. Redmond 1. What Happened at the Flashpoint? Conjectures on Chiefdom Formation at the Very Moment of Conception, by Robert L. Carneiro 2. Less than Meets the Eye: Evidence for Protohistoric Chiefdoms in Northern New Mexico, by Winifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas 3. In War and Peace: Alternative Paths to Centralized Leadership, by Elsa M. Redmond 4. Investigating the Development of Venezuelan Chiefdoms, by Charles S. Spencer 5. Tupinamba Chiefdoms? by William C. Sturtevant 6. Colonial Chieftains of the Lower Orinoco and Guayana Coast, by Neil L. Whitehead 7. War and Theocracy, by Pita Kelekna 8. The Muisca: Chiefdoms in Transition, by Doris Kurella 9. Social Foundations of Taino Caciques, by William Keegan, Morgan Maclachlan, and Brian Byrne 10. Native Chiefdoms and the Exercise of Complexity in Sixteenth-Century Florida, by Jerald T. Milanich 11. The Evolution of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom in Virginia, by Helen C. Rountree and E. Randolph Turner III Elsa M. Redmond, research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is the author of Tribal and Chiefly Warfare in South America and A Fuego y Sangre: Early Zapotec Imperialism in the Cuicatlan Canada, Oaxaca.

This book examines ways of conserving, managing, and interacting with plant and animal resources by Native American cultural groups of the Pacific Coast of North America, from Alaska to California. These practices helped them maintain and restore ecological balance for thousands of years. Building upon the authors' and others' previous works, the book brings in perspectives from ethnography and marine evolutionary ecology. The core of the book consists of Native American testimony: myths, tales, speeches, and other texts, which are treated from an ecological viewpoint. The focus on animals and in-depth research on stories, especially early recordings of texts, set this book apart. The book is divided into two parts, covering the Northwest Coast, and California. It then follows the division in lifestyle between groups dependent largely on fish and largely on seed crops. It discusses how the survival of these cultures functions in the contemporary world, as First Nations demand recognition and restoration of their ancestral rights and resource management practices.

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The Ainu Library

Around the planet, indigenous people are using old and new technologies to amplify their voices and broadcast information to a global audience. This is the first portrait of a powerful international movement that looks both inward and outward, helping to preserve ancient languages and cultures while communicating across cultural, political, and geographical boundaries. Based on more than twenty years of research, observation, and work experience in indigenous journalism, film, music and visual art, this volume includes specialized studies of Inuit in Nunavut and the circumpolar north, and First Nations peoples in the Yukon.

Valerie Alia is Adjunct Professor in the Doctor of Social Sciences programme at Royal Roads University (Canada) and Visiting Professor in the Centre for Diversity in the Professions at Leeds Metropolitan University. An award-winning scholar, journalist, photographer, and poet, she was Senior Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University, and Running Stream Professor of Ethics and Identity at Leeds Metropolitan University, and was a television and radio broadcaster, newspaper and magazine writer and arts reviewer in the US and Canada. Her books include: Un/Covering the North: News, Media and Aboriginal People; Media Ethics and Social Change; Media and Ethnic Minorities; and Names and Nunavut: Culture and Identity in Arctic Canada. She is a founding member of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association.

Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste--black people--and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish "entradas." They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin.

This book tells how people of African heritage came to blend their lives with those of their Indian neighbors and essentially became Creek themselves. Taking in the full historical sweep of African Americans among the Creeks, from the sixteenth century through Oklahoma statehood, Gary Zellar unfolds a narrative history of the many contributions these people made to Creek history.

Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Zellar reveals how African people functioned as warriors, interpreters, preachers, medicine men, and even slave labor, all of which allowed the tribe to withstand the shocks of Anglo-American expansion. He also tells how they provided leaders who helped the Creeks navigate the onslaught of allotment, tribal dissolution, and Oklahoma statehood.

In his compelling narrative, Zellar describes how African Creeks made a place for themselves in a tolerant Creek Nation in which they had access to land, resources, and political leverage--and how post-Civil War "reform" reduced them to the second-class citizenship of other African Americans. It is a stirring account that puts history in a new light as it adds to our understanding of the multi-ethnic nature of Indian societies.

A much-needed, indispensable volume for anyone involved in the social services or human services field, Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities supplies you with vital information that will assist you in offering culturally sensitive services to your clients. You will gain a new perspective from the blending of traditional academic research with the voices of those most intimately affected. From Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities, you will learn proven methods that will help you offer successful and effective services to your Native American clients.Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities reveals the stark realities facing American Indian people today. Through this compelling book you will gain new insight into the challenges presented to Native Americans and how to help your clients face these challenges by: learning how to assist American Indian families through an increased understanding of the new time-limited welfare assistance that generally only impacts them if they live off the reservation examining how poverty and a lack of infrastructure and social services exacerbates the problems Navajo women face when leaving violence in their homes using the positive power of language through case examples of American Indian women to understand how stories and their implications change significantly depending on if they are interpreted from a deficit or strength perspectiveFrom the information in Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities, you will gain new insight into specific problems facing American Indian people, including welfare reform 's devastating effects on American Indians trying live off the reservation and the impact of reservation isolation on domestic violence. The information in Pressing Issues of Inequality and American Indian Communities will help you provide culturally sensitive services to Native Americans and assist them in increasing their quality of life.