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From the Introduction by Lowell J. Bean:An apparent dichotomy exists in scientific circles concerning the role of religion and belief systems and a similar dichotomy exists among anthropological theorists. Two assumptions seem to prevail: ritual and world view are more ecologically nonadaptive than adaptive; or ritual and world view are more ecologically adaptive than they are nonadaptive. To examine the relevancy of the opposing theoretical views I will develop hypotheses concerning a particular culture, the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, which will be used as a test case. I will present two sets of hypotheses which logically follow from each of the assumptions. From the first ass...
Examines the culture, history, and changing fortunes of the Cahuilla Indians.
Saints and Citizens is a bold new excavation of the history of Indigenous people in California in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showing how the missions became sites of their authority, memory, and identity. Shining a forensic eye on colonial encounters in Chumash, Luiseño, and Yokuts territories, Lisbeth Haas depicts how native painters incorporated their cultural iconography in mission painting and how leaders harnessed new knowledge for control in other ways. Through her portrayal of highly varied societies, she explores the politics of Indigenous citizenship in the independent Mexican nation through events such as the Chumash War of 1824, native emancipation after 1826, and the political pursuit of Indigenous rights and land through 1848.
In Native cultures, health is often expressed as a balance between body, mind, and spirit or soul. At a philosophical level, physical wellness is related to cultural, political, and economic well-being. This is a philosophy that is frequently ignored, however, in theoretical perspectives and applied programs that attempt to address Native American health problems. This collection of essays examines the ways people from many indigenous communities think about and practice health care within historical and sociocultural contexts. Chapters explore solutions to the prevalence of medically identified diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, as well as Native-identified problems, such as forced evacuation, assimilation, and poverty. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Now no longer well known or clearly recognizable as a region, the Tulare Lake Basin also once supported the densest non-agricultural population in North America. This population, of Yokut Indians, caused little change to the wild oasis environment. Today, however, the Basin bears the rigid imprint of the past two centuries of technological progress, culminating in the complete domination of the land and landscape by large-scale, corporate farming. Natural landmarks and boundaries are subordinate to cultural creations, and the identity of the region has waned with its assimilation into the uniform landscape of international agribusiness and with the gradual demise of the lake itself. After de...
Thomas C. Patterson’s large-scale history of the Inland Empire of Southern California traces the social, political and economic changes in this region from the first Native American settlement 12,000 years ago to the present. Framing his discussion of this region in the general growth trajectory of California’s socio-economic history, he is able to connect landscape, resources, wealth, labor, and inequality using a Marxian framework for many key periods of the region’s history. In moving between large scale historical changes, regional adaptations and resistance to those changes, and a framework that places those responses in theoretical context, Patterson’s work allows the reader to see how inland Southern California developed into the warehouse empire of the 21st century and its prospects for the future.
This edited volume mainly focuses on the practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies in both North and South America. The editors and contributors (which include Native Peoples from both continents) examine the evidence and causes of Amerindian trophy taking. Additionally, they present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence. This book fills the gap in literature on this subject.
Celebrating the 150th birthday of the state of California offers the opportunity to reexamine the founding of modern California, from the earliest days through the Gold Rush and up to 1870. In this four-volume series, published in association with the California Historical Society, leading scholars offer a contemporary perspective on such issues as the evolution of a distinctive California culture, the interaction between people and the natural environment, the ways in which California's development affected the United States and the world, and the legacy of cultural and ethnic diversity in the state. California before the Gold Rush, the first California Sesquicentennial volume, combines top...