Raramuri Souls

Download or read book Raramuri Souls written by William L. Merrill and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his sensitive portrayal of the Raramuri (or Tarahumara) Indians, Merrill examines the ways in which a society, lacking formal educational institutions, produces and transmits its basic knowledge about the world.

Download or read book Rarámuri Souls written by William L. Merrill and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara written by William Dirk Raat and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tarahumara, "people of the edge", live on the boundaries of civilization, in the mountains and canyonlands of Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara. There, in southwestern Chihuahua, terrain terminates at the edge of canyons; there mountains border the sky. In these pages, words by W. Dirk Raat and images by George R. Janecek are testimony to the endurance of the Tarahumara people. Today, roughly fifty thousand Tarahumaras continue living in ways similar to those of their ancestors, retaining many customs from their pre-Columbian past. At the same time, as outsiders modify the environment in an effort to subsist - and to profit - the Tarahumara have adapted their culture in order to survive. Contemporary Tarahumara culture is a product largely of the Jesuit era, from 1607 to 1767. The native people responded to the Spanish either by trying to live beyond the influence of the Church or by becoming Christianized Indians and seeking Church protection. This distinction still can be seen. However, even those who became Christian did not succumb to attempts to eradicate traditional religious and cultural practices. Rather they incorporated Christianity into their own world view. The nineteenth century saw the arrival of gold and silver miners and of American promoters seeking to extend their commercial empire into northern Mexico. The twentieth century has witnessed the Mexican Revolution and the emergence of the "mestizo age". In the canyon homelands of the Tarahumara, railroads and electricity have facilitated extensive timber and copper mining as well as increased tourism.

Download or read book Rarámuri written by Carlos Maldonado Ortiz and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Tarahumara Medicine written by Fructuoso Irigoyen-Rascón and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tarahumara, one of North America’s oldest surviving aboriginal groups, call themselves Rarámuri, meaning “nimble feet”—and though they live in relative isolation in Chihuahua, Mexico, their agility in long-distance running is famous worldwide. Tarahumara Medicine is the first in-depth look into the culture that sustains the “great runners.” Having spent a decade in Tarahumara communities, initially as a medical student and eventually as a physician and cultural observer, author Fructuoso Irigoyen-Rascón is uniquely qualified as a guide to the Rarámuri’s approach to medicine and healing. In developing their healing practices, the Tarahumaras interlaced religious lore, magic, and careful observations of nature. Irigoyen-Rascón thoroughly situates readers in the Rarámuri’s environment, describing not only their health and nutrition but also the mountains and rivers surrounding them and key aspects of their culture, from long-distance kick-ball races to corn beer celebrations and religious dances. He describes the Tarahumaras’ curing ceremonies, including their ritual use of peyote, and provides a comprehensive description of Tarahumara traditional herbal remedies, including their botanical characteristics, attributed effects, and uses. To show what these practices—and the underlying concepts of health and disease—might mean to the Rarámuri and to the observer, Irigoyen-Rascón explores his subject from both an outsider and an insider (indigenous) perspective. Through his balanced approach, Irigoyen-Rascón brings to light relationships between the Rarámuri healing system and conventional medicine, and adds significantly to our knowledge of indigenous American therapeutic practices. As the most complete account of Tarahumara culture ever written, Tarahumara Medicine grants readers access to a world rarely seen—at once richly different from and inextricably connected with the ideas and practices of Western medicine.

Download or read book Medicine Ways written by Clifford E. Trafzer and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Shamanism [2 volumes] written by Mariko Namba Walter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.