scholarly journals Dialogical Relationships and the Bear in Indigenous Poetry

Sibirica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-120
Author(s):  
Stephan Dudeck
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Boreal Forest ◽  
Keystone Species ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Indigenous Poetry

The essay provides a review of a small but remarkable book on the work of two important Native American and Siberian poets, Meditations after the Bear Feast by Navarre Scott Momaday and Yuri Vella, published in 2016 by Shanti Arts in Brunswick, Maine. Their poetic dialogue revolves around the well-known role of the bear as a sociocultural keystone species in the boreal forest zone of Eurasia and North America. The essay analyzes the understanding of dialogicity as shaping the intersubjectivity of the poets emerging from human relationships with the environment. It tries to unpack the complex and prophetic bear dream in one of Vella’s poems in which he links indigenous ontologies with urgent sociopolitical problems.

Introduction

Bears ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Heather A. Lapham
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Human Animal

This chapter introduces the volume topic, bears and bear-human relationships in Native Eastern North America, and provides brief summaries of each chapter. It explains how ethnohistory, zooarchaeology, and ethnography are used to more fully understand and explore bear ceremonialism, human-animal relationships, indigenous worldviews, and Native American beliefs.

Ethnohistorical and Ethnographic Sources on Bear-Human Relationships in Native Eastern North America

Bears ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 16-47
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Waselkov
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
Meat Consumption ◽  
Black Bears ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Many ◽  
Eastern Half

This chapter compiles outsiders’ reactions to relationships observed between Native Americans and black bears (Ursus americanus) in the eastern half of the continent, with emphasis on the Southeast, during the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries. Written accounts provide a sense of the diverse patterns of bear-human relationships expressed by Native Americans that are potentially revealed by zooarchaeology. These accounts focus on economic transactions and food acquisition, preparation, and consumption. References cover bear hunting methods, bear meat consumption, the many uses of bear hides and bear oil, and some notes on bear cubs kept as pets. This systematic overview of ethnohistorical accounts and ethnographic sources on bear-human relationships in Native Eastern North America can inform interpretations of bear remains by zooarchaeologists who are studying Indigenous lifeways in contexts of hunting intensification, commodification of forest products, encroachment by intrusive settlers, missionizing, and cooption of Native American political elites.

Centering Indigenous People in the Study of Religion in America

Numen ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 303-307
Author(s):  
Tiffany Hale
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
American People ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Role Of Religion

Abstract This essay considers Jennifer Graber’s The Gods of Indian Country and Pamela Klassen’s The Story of Radio Mind together in considering new developments in the field of Native American and Indigenous studies. Hale examines how these books discuss the role of religion in shaping settler colonialism in North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She concludes that both works raise pressing methodological questions about how historians of religion can center the lives of Native American people in their work.

The Music Therapist: Creative Arts Therapist and Contemporary Shaman

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Music Therapist ◽  
Psychotherapy Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Contemporary Psychotherapy ◽  
The World ◽  
Traditional Healing Practices

While much of contemporary psychotherapy practice often focuses primarily on verbal exchange between therapists and clients, it is important to recognize that verbal expression is just one mode of expression, and not necessarily the deepest or most profound. Many clients in therapy may be more comfortable in expressing themselves in other ways through the modes of music, art, dance and psychodrama. The sources of the arts in healing extend back for many thousands of years and their modern expression through the creative arts therapies are now widely utilized in the mainstream of modern psychotherapy. Traditional healing practices are still widely practiced in many indigenous cultures around the world today and an appreciation of these practices can deeply enrich our understanding of the essential role of the arts in human expression. The aim of this paper is to consider the roots of the arts therapies and really all of psychotherapy, going as far back as pre-historic evidence, followed by an overview of living indigenous healing practices in such settings as Bushman culture in Namibia, Native American Indian culture, as well as in Kenya, Bali, Malaysia, Mongolia and more.

North America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Shushan
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Native American Religions ◽  
Widespread Acceptance ◽  
Revitalization Movements ◽  
Per Se ◽  
High Level ◽  
Near Death Experiences ◽  
Afterlife Beliefs

Dozens of Native American near-death experiences (NDEs) from the late sixteenth to early twentieth centuries are presented, ranging from across the continent. Many were accompanied by indigenous claims that they were the source for local afterlife beliefs. There were also many afterlife-related myths, and shamanic practices with NDE-like afterlife themes. In addition, numerous religious/cultural revitalization movements were claimed to have been grounded in the NDEs of their founders, and were conceptually related to the phenomenon. Near-death experiences could thus be an empowering force on a socio-cultural-political level in response to the threat of European dominance. There was a widespread acceptance and valorization of NDEs and related phenomena, and a high level of interest in the afterlife per se. Native American religions often showed a clear reciprocal relationship between shamanism, afterlife beliefs, and NDEs.

Women, Power, and Families in Early Modern North America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. S. Pearsall
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
Effects Of War

The early modern period, spanning 1500 to 1800, was a vital one for what became the United States, and families were critical to the colonies that underpinned it. Households determined lines of belonging and governance; they gave status and formed a central source of power for both women and men. They also functioned symbolically: creating metaphors for authority (father-king) as well as actual sources of authority. Colonialism, or the imposition of foreign governing regimes, also shaped families and intimacies. The regulation of domestic life was a central feature of colonial power, even as individual families, both settler and indigenous, breached rules that authorities sought to impose. This chapter considers the importance of lineage and households, as well as the effects of war, epidemics, and slavery. It traces a range of households, Native American, African, and Euro-American, to argue for the central importance of families in shaping colonial North America.

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