Hand Trembling, Frenzy Witchcraft, and Moth Madness

Hand Trembling, Frenzy Witchcraft, and Moth Madness
Author: Jerrold E. Levy
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816548048

According to traditional Navajo belief, seizures are the result of sibling incest, sexual witchcraft, or possession by a supernatural spirit—associations that have kept such disorders from being known outside Navajo families. This new study is concerned with discovering why the Navajos have accorded seizures such importance and determining their meaning in the larger context of Navajo culture. The book is based on a 14-year study of some 40 Navajo patients and on an epidemiological survey among the Navajos and among three Pueblo tribes.

Divination and Healing

Divination and Healing
Author: Michael Winkelman
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816550573

Divination is an important feature of cultures all over the world. While some may still question the efficacy of divination systems, they continue to serve their communities by diagnosing ailments, prescribing healing treatments, and solving problems. Yet despite their universality, there are relatively few comprehensive studies of divination systems. This volume seeks to fill this gap regarding the use of divination in healing. Here some of the world’s leading authorities draw on their own fieldwork and participation in ritual to present detailed case studies, demonstrating that divination rituals can have therapeutic effects. As the contributors examine the systems of knowledge that divination articulates and survey the varieties of divinatory experience, they seek to analyze divination as an epistemological system, as a social process, and as a therapeutic endeavor. While some of their findings reinforce traditional assumptions about the importance of social control, spirit relations, and community support in the divination process, the authors place these considerations within new epistemological frameworks that emphasize the use of alternative modes of knowing. In this wide-ranging volume, readers will find coverage of classic Ifa systems; Buddhist-influenced shamanic practices in the former Soviet Union; the reconciliation of Muslim beliefs and divinatory practices in Thailand; Native American divination used in diagnosis; Maya calendrical divination in Guatemala; mediumistic and chicken oracle divination among the Sukuma of Tanzania; Ndembu divination, focusing on the process of collective healing; and divination among the Samburu (Maasai) of Kenya, featuring dialogues from actual healing sessions. Together, these contributions argue for new perspectives on the study of divination that emphasize not only the epistemological roots of these systems but also their multifaceted therapeutic functions. Divination and Healing is a rich source of both data and insight for scholars of ritual, religion, medical anthropology, and the psychology of altered states of consciousness.

Cultural and Ethnic Diversity

Cultural and Ethnic Diversity
Author: Nancy L. Fisher
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1996-09-24
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780801853463

"The first global attempt by several experts from diverse backgrounds to address specific ethnic and cultural beliefs and their implications for genetic services. It is long overdue!" -- Alliance Alert.

Breath and Smoke

Breath and Smoke
Author: Jennifer A. Loughmiller-Cardinal
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019
Genre: Mayas
ISBN: 0826360920

Breath and Smoke explores the uses of tobacco among the Maya of Central America, revealing tobacco as a key topic in pre-Columbian art, iconography, and hieroglyphics.

Biological Exuberance

Biological Exuberance
Author: Bruce Bagemihl
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 1549
Release: 2000-04-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1466809272

A Publishers Weekly Best Book One of the New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember" for 1999 Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, filled with fascinating facts and astonishing descriptions of animal behavior, Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance is a landmark book that will change forever how we look at nature. Homosexuality in its myriad forms has been scientifically documented in more than 450 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and other animals worldwide. Biological Exuberance is the first comprehensive account of the subject, bringing together accurate, accessible, and nonsensationalized information. Drawing upon a rich body of zoological research spanning more than two centuries, Bagemihl shows that animals engage in all types of nonreproductive sexual behavior. Sexual and gender expression in the animal world displays exuberant variety, including same-sex courtship, pair-bonding, sex, and co-parenting—even instances of lifelong homosexual bonding in species that do not have lifelong heterosexual bonding. Part 1, "A Polysexual, Polygendered World," begins with a survey of homosexuality, transgender, and nonreproductive heterosexuality in animals and then delves into the broader implications of these findings, including a valuable perspective on human diversity. Bagemihl also examines the hidden assumptions behind the way biologists look at natural systems and suggests a fresh perspective based on the synthesis of contemporary scientific insights with traditional knowledge from indigenous cultures. Part 2, "A Wondrous Bestiary," profiles more than 190 species in which scientific observers have noted homosexual or transgender behavior. Each profile is a verbal and visual "snapshot" of one or more closely related bird or mammal species, containing all the documentation required to support the author's often controversial conclusions.

The American Indian Mind in a Linear World

The American Indian Mind in a Linear World
Author: Donald L. Fixico
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135389675

Currently, there are three approaches to studying American Indians: from how white Americans approach Indian studies, from the dynamics or exchange of Indian-white relations and from the Indian point of view. Donald Fixico, an American Indian, has been teaching and writing history for a quarter of a century. This book is the direct result of his experience as a scholar who 'thinks like an Indian' in an academic environment created predominantly by non-Indian thinkers. This book addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history. Written primarily from inside the Native world, but fully cognizant of the American cultures outside of that world, his unique voice speaks to a need for understanding the interior Native world: a world in which linear thinking is atypical and circularity is preferable.

Revenge of the Windigo

Revenge of the Windigo
Author: James Burgess Waldram
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780802086006

What is known about Aboriginal mental health and mental illness, and on what basis is this 'knowing' assumed? This question, while appearing simple, leads to a tangled web of theory, method, and data rife with conceptual problems, shaky assumptions, and inappropriate generalizations. It is also the central question of James Waldram's Revenge of the Windigo. This erudite and highly articulate work is about the knowledge of Aboriginal mental health: who generates it; how it is generated and communicated; and what has been - and continues to be - its implications for Aboriginal peoples. To better understand how this knowledge emerged, James Waldram undertakes an exhaustive examination of three disciplines - anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry - and reveals how together they have constructed a gravely distorted portrait of 'the Aboriginal.' Waldram continues this acute examination under two general themes. The first focuses on how culture as a concept has been theorized and operationalized in the study of Aboriginal mental health. The second seeks to elucidate the contribution that Aboriginal peoples have inadvertently made to theoretical and methodological developments in the three fields under discussion, primarily as subjects for research and sources of data. It is Waldram's assertion that, despite the enormous amount of research undertaken on Aboriginal peoples, researchers have mostly failed to comprehend the meaning of contemporary Aboriginality for mental health and illness, preferring instead the reflection of their own scientific lens as the only means to properly observe, measure, assess, and treat. Using interdisciplinary methods, the author critically assesses the enormous amount of information that has been generated on Aboriginal mental health, deconstructs it, and through this exercise, provides guidance for a new vein of research.

Aboriginal Health in Canada

Aboriginal Health in Canada
Author: James Burgess Waldram
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0802085792

Numerous studies, inquiries, and statistics accumulated over the years have demonstrated the poor health status of Aboriginal peoples relative to the Canadian population in general. Aboriginal Health in Canada is about the complex web of physiological, psychological, spiritual, historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease patterns among the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. The authors explore the evidence for changes in patterns of health and disease prior to and since European contact, up to the present. They discuss medical systems and the place of medicine within various Aboriginal cultures and trace the relationship between politics and the organization of health services for Aboriginal people. They also examine popular explanations for Aboriginal health patterns today, and emphasize the need to understand both the historical-cultural context of health issues, as well as the circumstances that give rise to variation in health problems and healing strategies in Aboriginal communities across the country. An overview of Aboriginal peoples in Canada provides a very general background for the non-specialist. Finally, contemporary Aboriginal healing traditions, the issue of self-determination and health care, and current trends in Aboriginal health issues are examined.

A Diné History of Navajoland

A Diné History of Navajoland
Author: Klara Kelley
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816538743

For the first time, a sweeping history of the Diné that is foregrounded in oral tradition. Authors Klara Kelley and Harris Francis share Diné history from pre-Columbian time to the present, using ethnographic interviews in which Navajo people reveal their oral histories on key events such as Athabaskan migrations, trading and trails, Diné clans, the Long Walk of 1864, and the struggle to keep their culture alive under colonizers who brought the railroad, coal mining, trading posts, and, finally, climate change. The early chapters, based on ceremonial origin stories, tell about Diné forebears. Next come the histories of Diné clans from late pre-Columbian to early post-Columbian times, and the coming together of the Diné as a sovereign people. Later chapters are based on histories of families, individuals, and communities, and tell how the Diné have struggled to keep their bond with the land under settler encroachment, relocation, loss of land-based self-sufficiency through the trading-post system, energy resource extraction, and climate change. Archaeological and documentary information supplements the oral histories, providing a comprehensive investigation of Navajo history and offering new insights into their twentieth-century relationships with Hispanic and Anglo settlers. For Diné readers, the book offers empowering histories and stories of Diné cultural sovereignty. “In short,” the authors say, “it may help you to know how you came to be where—and who—you are.”