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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Nature and Status, published in 1978, is still a standard text of the discipline, with classic papers exploring theoretical issues, principles of plant utilization, prehistoric economics, and more. A reprint of this watershed volume includes all these classic papers, a new 30-page introduction by Ford, and pages of new references.
Inhabiting the Sierra Madre Occidental of southwestern Chihuahua in Mexico, the Tarahumara (or Rar‡muri) are known in their language as the "foot runners" due to the way in which they must navigate their rugged terrain. This book offers an accessible ethnography of their history, customs, and current life, accompanied by photographs that offer striking images of these gentle people. The subtitle of the book derives from the Tarahumar's belief that the soul works at night while the body sleeps and that during this "day of the moon" both the spirits of the dead and the souls of the living move about in their mysterious ways. As the authors observe, the fact that "so many men, women, and children persist in distinctive, centuries-old cultural traditions in spite of their nearness to all the complexities and attractions of modern industrial society is an importatn part of the story." Their book tells that story and brings readers closer to understanding the Tarahumara world and way of life.
An Introduction to Native North America provides a basic introduction to the native peoples of North America, including both the United States and Canada. It covers the history of research, basic prehistory, the European invasion and the impact of Europeans on Native cultures. Additionally, much of the book is written from the perspective of the ethnographic present, and the various cultures are described as they were at the specific times noted in the text.