20th century native american culture
20th century native american history
A01=Greg Sarris
american indians
anthropology
art
Author_Greg Sarris
basketry
bole maru
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC
Category=JBGB
Category=JBSL11
coast miwok tribe
cross cultural communication
cultural practices
cultural studies
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
folklore
indigenous peoples
language and culture
literary criticism
love medicine
native american demographic studies
native americans
native peoples
oral tradition
orality
pedagogy
pomo
religion
reservation classroom
storytelling
united states of america
Product details
- ISBN 9780520080072
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Aug 1993
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This remarkable collection of eight essays offers a rare perspective on the issue of cross-cultural communication. Greg Sarris is concerned with American Indian texts, both oral and written, as well as with other American Indian cultural phenomena such as basketry and religion. His essays cover a range of topics that include orality, art, literary criticism, and pedagogy, and demonstrate that people can see more than just 'what things seem to be'. Throughout, he asks: How can we read across cultures so as to encourage communication rather than to close it down? Sarris maintains that cultural practices can be understood only in their living, changing contexts. Central to his approach is an understanding of storytelling, a practice that embodies all the indeterminateness, structural looseness, multi valence, and richness of culture itself. He describes encounters between his Indian aunts and Euro-American students and the challenge of reading in a reservation classroom; he brings the reports of earlier ethnographers out of museums into the light of contemporary literary and anthropological theory.
Sarris' perspective is exceptional: son of a Coast Miwok/Pomo father and a Jewish mother, he was raised by Mabel McKay - a renowned Cache Creek Pomo basket weaver and medicine woman - and by others, Indian and non-Indian, in Santa Rosa, California. Educated at Stanford, he is now a university professor and recently became Chairman of the Federated Coast Miwok tribe. His own story is woven into these essays and provides valuable insights for anyone interested in cross-cultural communication, including educators, theorists of language and culture, and general readers.
Greg Sarris is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is editor of Rattles and Clappers: An Anthology of California Indian Writing (1993) and author of a forthcoming collection of short stories, Grand Avenue.
