Blog Entry 6: Counternarratives of the Eastern Woodlands

Blog Entry 6: Counternarratives of the Eastern Woodlands (Sessions 23-28)

Due Date: Thursday, April 30 (by midnight)

Suggested Prompt:

"The Effigy Mound culture," argues Wilson (1998:91) in The Shamanic Trace, "... chose an economy/technology which (according to the prejudices of social evolution and 'progress') represents a step backward in human development. It took this step, apparently, because it considered this the right thing to do." 

What is Wilson's intervention here? Do you agree with his argument? And to what degree might his critique of notions of evolutionary progress be extended to the greater sweep of Eastern Woodland (pre)history?

Trip to AMNH, Take 2

On Saturday, April 4, at 12:00 we will again be visiting the American Museum of Natural History. The first 20 people to sign up for this trip (sign up by posting a comment below) should plan to meet us on the front steps of the museum at noon sharp.

Hope to see you there!

Best,

sev

Blog Entry 5: Wisdom Sits in Places

Blog Entry 5: Wisdom Sits in Places (Sessions 17-18)

Due Date: Sunday evening, April 5

Suggested Prompt:

For the Western Apache, writes Basso, the landscape is "not merely a physical presence but an omnipresent moral force" (63). How, following Basso and his Apache collaborators, are we to understand the complicated interplay of history, place, and morality? In what sense are we presented with an alternate understanding of "history" itself? What is meant when we are told that place-making "is a way of constructing the past, a venerable means of doing human history" (7)?

Trip to ANMH

On Saturday, March 28, at 12:00 we will be visiting the American Museum of Natural History. The first 20 people to sign up for this trip (sign up by posting a comment below) should plan to meet us at the lower entrance of the museum below the staircase at noon sharp.

Hope to see you there!

Best,

Sev

Blog Entry 4: The Delight Makers

Blog Entry 4: The Delight Makers (Sessions 13-16)

Due Date: Tuesday, Mar. 24 (by midnight)

As in all your blog entries, we ask for your critical reflection on the themes discussed in lecture and in your readings. If you have strong personal reactions, critiques, or praise to offer one or more of the texts in question, please do follow your interests. Each week, however, we will be offering a suggested prompt that you may also choose to address.

As always, we are looking for an engaged and critical response to the course materials. Be bold, smart, and opinionated.

Suggested Prompt:

The Delight Makers presents us with an extraordinarily detailed image of an Ancestral Pueblo village based upon Bandelier's extensive ethnographic studies among the Keresan and Tewa Pueblos. While superficially a work of fiction, Bandelier drew liberally from indigenous accounts of life in Frijoles Canyon, and he was at pains to be true to the material culture, social dynamics and specific practices he had witnessed during his time among the Puelbos. In other words, when Bandelier wrote about the organization of the Koshare, conflicts over agricultural land, witchcraft accusations, factionalism, or the ritual labor of caciques (or high priests), his story may be taken as a viable ethnographic description—more "truth" than "fiction," as it were.

With that in mind, we are interested in hearing your analysis of the social dynamics presented in the story. How, for instance did accusations of witchcraft function within the political life of the village? How were clan affiliations drawn upon in the day-to-day negotiations of village members? To what extent were ritual societies such as the Koshare involved in the building of both religious and political power? And if you are feeling bold... how might we re-read the village described within The Delight Makers as a historically contingent social formation, one that was recognizably post-Chacoan.

Blog Entry 3: Violence, Anarchy and the Rhetoric of Cannibalism (Session 11-12)

Blog Entry 3: Violence, Anarchy and the Rhetoric of Cannibalism (Session 11-12)

Due Date: Saturday, Feb. 28 (by midnight).

As in all your blog entries, we ask for your critical reflection on the themes discussed in lecture and in your readings. If you have strong personal reactions, critiques, or praise to offer one or more of the texts in question (or if you want to argue against a point made in lecture) please do follow your interests. Each week, however, we will be offering a suggested prompt that you may also choose to address.

As always, we are looking for an engaged and critical response to the course materials. Be bold, smart, and opinionated.

Suggested Prompt:

Consider this quote from Peter Whiteley --
Cannibalism was first used as a generalizing term by Edmund Burke in 1796: "By cannibalism, I mean this devouring, as a nutrient of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered". Burke was speaking polemically of regicide and its accompanying bloody horrors in the French Revolution (Whiteley 2008, 188).

How might thinking about this quote help us to think about our readings this week, and the questions of violence (against the state) and the (rhetoric of) cannibalism? Can we think of accusations of cannibalism, in Western discourse, as a rhetorical device meant to discredit anarchic violence, that is, violence against the state? If so, what are the philosophical/theological underpinnings and historical (colonial) encounters behind such rhetoric? What role have accusations of cannibalism played among Native groups in the American South West? Are these rhetorics, and the violence they generate, comparable?

Blog Entry 2: First Americans (Sessions 5-8)

Blog Entry 2: First Americans (Sessions 5-8)

Due Date: Sunday, February 15 (by midnight)

Assignment: As in all your blog entries, we ask for your critical reflection on the themes discussed in lecture and in your readings. If you have strong personal reactions, critiques, or praise to offer one or more of the texts in question (or if you want to argue against a point made in lecture) please do follow your interests. Each week, however, we will be offering a suggested prompt that you may also choose to address.

Suggested Prompt: 

The discovery of 9,400-year-old human remains—now known alternately as "Kennewick Man" or the "Ancient One"—eroding out of a river bank in Washington state in 1996 sparked a vigorous debate in North American archaeology. The skeleton is among the most complete and best preserved of those from the early occupation of the continent, and many archaeologists look upon the find as a rare opportunity to further our understanding of the Paleoindian period. Native American groups in the region (and many archaeologists), however, view the find quite differently; to them the Ancient One is an aboriginal ancestor in need of a proper reburial. The result of these conflicting viewpoints has been an often-heated debate over the conflicting rights of scientists and Native Americans to exert control over archaeological remains. As such, the Kennewick Man debate has become the foremost venue in which the revolutionary 1990 repatriation legislation known as NAGPRA has been examined and critiqued.

Should the remains have been reburied? How are we to draw the lines between the rights of archaeologists, the non-Native public, and Native America communities in this and future confrontations?

Please consult the two recommended readings in courseworks for Session 8 as well as the following link to the Umatilla Tribe: www.umatilla.nsn.us/ancient.html