Bulletin

Bulletin
Author: New Jersey. Bureau of Geology and Topography
Publisher:
Total Pages: 508
Release: 1912
Genre: Geology
ISBN:

We Are Coming Home

We Are Coming Home
Author: Gerald T. Conaty
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2015-03-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1771990171

In 1990, Gerald Conaty was hired as senior curator of ethnology at the Glenbow Museum, with the particular mandate of improving the museum’s relationship with Aboriginal communities. That same year, the Glenbow had taken its first tentative steps toward repatriation by returning sacred objects to First Nations’ peoples. These efforts drew harsh criticism from members of the provincial government. Was it not the museum’s primary legal, ethical, and fiduciary responsibility to ensure the physical preservation of its collections? Would the return of a sacred bundle to ceremonial use not alter and diminish its historical worth and its value to the larger society? Undaunted by such criticism, Conaty oversaw the return of more than fifty medicine bundles to Blackfoot and Cree communities between the years of 1990 and 2000, at which time the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act (FNSCORA)—still the only repatriation legislation in Canada—was passed. “Repatriation,” he wrote, “is a vital component in the creation of an equitable, diverse, and respectful society.” We Are Coming Home is the story of the highly complex process of repatriation as described by those intimately involved in the work, notably the Piikani, Siksika, and Kainai elders who provided essential oversight and guidance. We also hear from the Glenbow Museum’s president and CEO at the time and from an archaeologist then employed at the Provincial Museum of Alberta who provides an insider’s view of the drafting of FNSCORA. These accounts are framed by Conaty’s reflections on the impact of museums on First Nations, on the history and culture of the Niitsitapi, or Blackfoot, and on the path forward. With Conaty’s passing in August of 2013, this book is also a tribute to his enduring relationships with the Blackfoot, to his rich and exemplary career, and to his commitment to innovation and mindful museum practice.

Wakinyan

Wakinyan
Author: Stephen E. Feraca
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780803269057

Wakinyan is an excellent overview of Lakota religious thought and practice, introducing readers to its essential components. Through finely detailed descriptions of rituals and various types of religious figures, Stephen E. Feraca explains the significance of such practices as the Sun Dance, sweat lodge ritual, vision quest, Yuwipi ritual, and peyote use. He also discusses the significance of herbs and religious artifacts and objects and explains the roles and responsibilities of medicine men and other religious practitioners. First written as a report for the Department of the Interior in 1963, Wakinyan has long been recognized as a classic study of Lakota religion. This edition retains most of the original text, with its first-rate ethnographic descriptions of religious practices. The author's new endnotes bring the reader up to date on changes in Lakota religion during the last three decades.

Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies

Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies
Author: H. David Brumble
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783087838

Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies is a study of the autobiographies of tribal-warrior cultures in North America, the Amazon, the Orinoco Basin, the highlands of Luzon, the island of Alor — of headhunters, women, Apaches, New Guinea big men and a Yanomami captive. The book also discusses tribal-warrior autobiographies closer to home: Colton Simpson’s Inside the Crips, Mona Ruiz’s Two Badges, Nathan McCall’s Makes Me Wanna Holler and Sanyika Shakur’s Monster, autobiographies that remember gangbanging at a time when there were close to 500 gang-related homicides a year in Los Angeles—a time when gangbangers were so alienated from the larger society that they reinvented something very similar to the tribal-warrior cultures right in the asphalt heart of American cities. Grisly, probing and resonant with the voices of generations of fighters, Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies is an unsettling work of cross-disciplinary scholarship.