Ethnography Dancing Skeletons

In 1973, Christopher Bruce heard about the murders going on in the small villages and towns of Chile on the orders of the government; just to show off their power, and how they were not afraid to use it. Bruce found out as a result of a letter received from a widow of a Chilean folk singer who had been murdered. He was asked to do work for the Chilean Human Rights Committee. The dance first premiered in 1988, the costume designer being Belinda Scarlett and the music being by Incantation, playing the song ‘Ojos Azules’ which is Spanish for ‘Blue Eyes’.

Katherine Dettwyler’s work in the field while she was in West Africa was exciting, filled with humor and even terrifying at times. She dealt with seeing various life-threatening diseases that affected the lives of children her daughter’s age, as well as adults. Dettwyler found that almost all of the people she came in contact with were completely oblivious and uninformed of the ways to prevent diseases such as malaria, Schistosomiasis, malnutrition and other infectious diseases unique to their region of the world. In her book, Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa (1994), Dettwyler discusses tons of the health problems she comes across, in

Dancing Skeletons by Katherine Dettwyler is an ethnography that focuses on how infant feeding practices and childhood malnourishment leads to life threatening disease like measles, diarrhea, tetanus, malaria, and diphtheria. On the other hand, the author also experiences how Malian people perceive illness, society structure, and cultural norms of how men are viewed toward a women’s sexuality. However, cultural relativism has controversial cultural practices in Dancing Skeletons which has horrifying traditions and require us to take into account before we form a bias opinion (Lavenda, 2009, pp. 222-223).

Throughout the settlement of Western America, Native Americans were culturally assimilated. This was an attempt by the Americans to transform the Natives’ culture and civilize them through white education and living on reservations. However, the Natives preserved their cultures, tribal identities, and even developed self-sustaining economic practices. First, The Ghost Dance Movement was a revival of Native beliefs that further helped them regain hope through religion. Specifically, it was a religion of the late 1880s and early 1890s that combined elements of Christianity and traditional Native American religion. It fostered the Plains Indians’ hope that they could resurrect the great bison herds and call up a storm to drive whites back across

In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death In West Africa (published in 1994), the core argument is best shown when the author, Katherine A. Dettwyler, says on page 142, “ What is wrong with this picture?” Suddenly, it dawned on me. The children- dancing with abandon, smiles on their faces looked like dancing skeletons. They were the living embodiment of Camille Saint-Saen’s “Dance Macabre. “They were the warrior skeletons from Ray Harryhausen’s film Jason and the Argonauts-dancing, instead of fighting. They flung their arms and legs about like kindling, knees and elbows jutting out of painfully thin arms and legs like knots in the wood” (Dettwyler 142).

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, is about a missionary family, the Prices, who move from Bethlehem, Georgia to a small village in the Congo. They choose to move during a time when there is great upheaval about to happen in the region. The reader learns about their trials and tribulations of life in the Congo through the five Price females, who talk about the events from their own the points of view. In the beginning, I thought I would not like this book; however I found that I had a hard time putting it down and ended up finishing the book quickly. There were many things Kingsolver did to make this book so appealing. From her use of dialogue and imagery, with such different character personalities, set in a historical time which gave this piece of fiction a hint of authenticity, to her underlying theme of human nature, both good and bad. It is all of these things combined which make The Poisonwood Bible a highly recommended book to read.

The Ghost Dance was a religion or movement that combined Christianity and traditional Indian religion elements that served as a nonviolent form of resistance for Indians in the late nineteenth century. At the time, conditions were bad on Indian reservations and Native Americans needed something to give them hope or something to look forward too. So they created and turned to the Ghost Dance.

Anderson starts out the book by introducing the reader to her interest in African culture,and relates how she sent essays to an anthropological board so she could go to Africa to do her graduate study. She soon realised that she would be unable to do so because

The Ghost Dance was a sign of hope for the Native American that they truly believed in. The fact that many of them would dance till unconscious shows the determination and faith that the Native Americans had in the hope of being free once again. Not many citizens in this day and age have faith as strong as the Native Americans; which, can be quite disheartening at times. It is infuriating how the government treated civil, non-threatening, cooperative human beings known as Native Americans. In fact, those Native Americans were people that rightfully belonged to those native lands. The general policy came across as not even seeing these people as actual human beings more as an unwanted nuisance that could be controlled by means of arbitrary acts

Indian tribes, hurt and facing a time of poverty, hunger and disease, sought a means of salvation to bring hope to their traditional culture. The evolution of a new religion, the Ghost Dance, was a reaction to the Indians being forced to submit to white men government and reservation life. The Ghost Dance religion promised salvation in the coming years during which time the earth would be destroyed, only to be recreated with the Indians as the inheritors of the new earth. The ghost dance outcome

The Mormons and their highly contested religious views have similarities that one can correlate to the Native Americans and their practices in the West during the 19th century. After reading two primary sources, James Mooney’s The Ghost Dance Religion (Porcupine’s Account of the Messiah in the Appendix) and Mrs. Z. A. Parker’s description of a Ghost Dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1890, it is logical to conclude that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the American Indians in the 1800s both were yearning for freedom, perhaps for different reasons, but they both definitely wanted the independence and the privilege to practice however they liked. Even if the Mormons and Native Americans did not get along in the Great Basin

The American government felt threatened by the Ghost Dance and the prophecies that the Indians believed. F. Royer, a Pine Ridge Reservation agent sent a telegraph to Washington that said “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy. We need protection and we need it now” (Elder). He wanted to leaders arrested and believed that their safety may be at risk. The government sent troops, but a former Indian agent advised the troops to leave as the he did not want trouble to come (Phillips). Assistant General Williams sent word to the major General also to advise that the Indians should be left alone to avoid conflict (Ghost Dances).

In the ethnography, “Dancing Skeletons, the author Katherine Dettwyler describes many reasons for her research in Mali. The main focus of her research was too attack the problem of malnourished children and to figure out what diseases they were struggling with. This ethnography detailed Dettwyler’s second trip to Mali, and she wanted to relocate many of the children she had previously measured, as well as add more children to her study. Throughout the ethnography, Dettwyler makes it very clear that the malnutrition of these children is a major problem in Mali. She describes many of the children she measures and the picture she paints in one’s mind is horrifying. One of the many diseases she comes across is Kwashiorkor,

Throughout many readings, western and European culture is forced upon American Indians. While some resist and this makes them cling even tighter to their native culture, others seem to be persuaded by these influences. In particular, there are solid references to this in both Ohiyesa’s “The Ghost Dance War” as well as in Mary Rowlandson’s capture narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. However, both texts seem to have a different opinion on those American Indians who become ‘westernized’, be it through cultural convention or through religious belief or conversion. The English’s view of them is already set in stone and their ethnocentrism is too strongly imbedded in

Dance has been a natural movement form since the beginning of time. The origin of dance is unknown, just as the knowledge of the benefits of dance are unknown to many in our society. Many people do not enjoy dancing and also do not fully understand the positive benefits that come from dancing. Researchers such as Edwards, Duberg, and many more have found countless mental and emotional benefits of dance that originate from movement patterns, brain connections, and even expressions of emotion. Many are aware of the physical benefits of dance, but beyond the physical benefits of dance, there are also emotional and mental benefits that come from dance as well.