Two books by white authors.

[debbieredbear]

I just finished one and am reading the other. But I think they are worth a read especially for nuagers. The first is "Going Native or Going Naive? White Shamanism and the Neo-Noble Savage." By Dagmar Wernitnig.  

The second, and the one I like best is, DReam Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality" by Philip Jenkins.  Jenkins is a History and Religion proffessor and did some good research. The book starts back when Indigenous religions were considered devil worship nd comes up through modern times. I had a few "AHA!" moments in it. Like I was wondering when all this Medicine Wheel crap strated. Cause I don't remember anyone being all crazy about it when I was younger. Well, Jenkins traced it back to Heywhatever Storm and SunBear. and I thought, "Yep. That's right." Cause before that I never heard people all talking about it. Anyway. They are good reads.

[JosephSWM]

Thanks for the info on the books. I will look for them (but not at Amazon).

Heywhatever sure did reinvent the wheel now didn't he? That and all his medicine sheilds. Too many shields, one was too many.

[debbieredbear]

I had to order the Going Native book from Barnes & Noble. But I ordered the Dream Catchers book from the small, independant book store near me.  They are hooked into Booksense http://booksense.com/)

I try to buy from the indy stores as much as possible. You can also order books online from POwell's City of Books, a huge indy store in Portland, Oregon. They are at powells.com

[Laurel]

Haven't read Going Native yet, but Dream Catchers is a good read.

BTW--I think Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places has been mentioned, but I also love his Portraits of "the Whiteman:"  Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache.  It's a bit of a dry read for non-academics, maybe, but it does a throughly wonderful job of pointing up the gaffes Whites make when we try to interact with Western Apaches, why they're gaffes, how the Apaches react, and what more respectful behavior might look like.  How much of this holds true for other nations I don't know, but I'm sure some of it does.  The cartoons are hilarious too.

These interactions not quite the subject of the book, but it addresses them brilliantly.  It's an enlightening, funny, and slightly mortifying read.   

[debbieredbear]

Portraits of "the Whiteman:"  Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache sounds like a really interesting book. I wonder if I can get it on Interlibrary Loan?

[Laurel]

I hope so.  It's from Cambridge University Press; I read it for a folklore seminar.

My favorite comment on it comes from Simon Ortiz:  "Ethnographers are not the only ones who do ethnography and Portraits... presents the most subtle evidence that this is so for North American Indians.  It is absolutely at the cutting edge of developments in mutual understanding, to say nothing of the fact that it is superb anthropology."

Unfortunately it was first published in 1979!  We could use another dose of this "go[ing] to the very heart of the difficulties in Anglo-American and Native American relations" (WH Goodenough) stuff for sure.