Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places Essay

Most Indian names have a deeper meaning behind them or a different definition that we aren’t aware of. For instance, the name Seneca comes from the Iroquoian term which means “people of the standing or protecting rock”, and the name Cayuga means “people of the great swamp”. Originating in New York, this unique tribe belongs to the largest part of the Five Nations; they are the Iroquoian linguistic family.

The Apache community of the southwest culture area consists of nomadic peoples that have lived in the desert southwest for hundreds of years (Sage, 2016). Power, similar to the Netsilik and Lakota, plays a role in the daily lives and culture of the Apache. Anthropologist Keith Basso (1970) explains, that to the Apache, power is known and understood but it so complex that to talk about it would not provide satisfactory explanation (37). For the Apache this notion of power is similar to the Lakota’s, the Apache call the supernatural powers that are unexplainable godiyo. However, power for the Apache is not as communal as the Netsilik and the Lakota peoples. For the Apache, the majority does not have power but those that do have it can make use

I am going to write a short text about the newspaper article “Native American Heritage Month”. In this text I am going to focus about how power full names can be when it comes to heritage and identity. However, I am also going to give examples from the text “Native American Heritage Month” to illustrated my thoughts. Nevertheless, I am going to connect this text with to other texts I have read in “Perspectives Magazine”.

Plateau Indians- plateau Indians live by the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Cascade Range and Canadian Coast Ranges on the west. In high plateau lands.

Taylor describes how most of their well being was based around horticulture, a couple of annual trips dedicated to hunting buffalo. Subsequently, the author spoke to the religion of the tribes in the Great Plains which, like most Native religions, was based on a dualism between life and death. A few tribes were not villages, instead living a nomadic lifestyle and following the herds of buffalo wherever they roamed. The nomads became collectively known as the Apache. Almost everything they ate, wore, and owned was provided by the buffalo.

Though today, the Blackfoot territory is defined by reserve/reservation boundaries and divided by the United States-Canadian border, their homeland, Nitawahsinnanni (“our land”), continues to be defined by topographical features using their language (The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2013, 12). This traditional homeland spans from the North Saskatchewan River (Ponokasisahta, the Elk River) as far south as the Yellowstone River, Montana (Otahkoitahtayi) and from the Rocky Mountains as far East as the “Great Sand Hills

What was the population of Native Americans in North America at the time of Columbus’s arrival?

However, stories aren’t the only important aspects of Apachean mythology. Like many other Native American tribes around the U.S., the Apache often incorporate natural landmarks into their sacred lives. For the Mescalero tribe, the Sierra Blanca, Guadalupe, Three Sisters and Oscura mountains are all sacred sites. According to the Our Culture page on the Mescalero Apache Tribe website, “These four mountains represent the direction of everyday life for our Apache people. Our grandparents would often speak of the place called White Mountain. It was there that the creator gave us life and it is a special place. It was on White Mountain, according to legend, that White Painted Woman gave birth to two sons, Child of Water and Killer of Enemies.

Keith H. Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache delivers a strong message regarding human connections between place, identity, and origins in relation to the idea of place-names. Every place evokes an association to a story and/or a person/ancestor bearing a moral message that allows the Western Apache to shape their beliefs, behaviors, identities, etc. It is through this connection to the land that the Apache begin to define their understanding of their lives.

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso is a noteworthy account introducing us, its audience, to four incredible Apache people. Each of these people provides a different perspective on the weight of places in their culture. The book starts off with the question: What do people make of places? In posing this query, Basso implies that he intends to cross-examine human ties to place; the link between place, identity and origins; and the association between place to shared sensibilities and temperaments. In Apache culture, notions of wisdom, morals, behavior, and history are intricately interwoven with ideas of place. In this book, Basso includes conversations with the Apache on these concepts, developing

A few miles mauka of Kukaniloko, toward the Waimea Mountains, is Helemano, where the last of the cannibal chiefs from the South Seas eventually settled after being driven from the plains of Mokuleia and Waialua by the people of those districts. The people had been infuriated by the frequent demands on them to furnish bodies for cannibal feasts. To the east of Helemano, and about the same distance from Kukaniloko, is O’ahunui (“Great Oahu”), another historical place. This was the residence of the kings of the island. Tradition has it that before the coming of the cannibal chiefs, the place had a different name.

Many scholars have already explained how a name for a place was carefully chosen by the Natives based on historical and spiritual facts. The Natives do not simply lived in a place, they created a bond with nature. Thus, places hold a meaning, and so their names (Thornton, 2008). On the contrary, for those who pretend to keep controlling and exploiting places that once belong to the natives, like those with neoclassical ideas, a place name is just a location that can be found on a map or can be conquered and dominated.

The author names three uses of ecological calendars: 1. Serve as a framework to organize and communicate TEK within and across cultures; 2. Helps capture direct links among the seasonal cycles and the ecological, cultural, and spiritual aspects of traditional life; 3. Provides representations of indigenous NRM that offer some steps toward elucidating advantages of indigenous over Western NRM

He uses phrases such as “the land of Jordan (17)” and “from the hill of Mizar (18)”. These are names of real places during this

Mark remembers the background information on the area that the Bishop told him. The Indian name of the village is Quee which means “inside place”... Whoop Szo, the Noisy Mountain...Now Kingcome is known as a