Power: The Role Of Power In The Apache Culture

The religion detailed and examined throughout Don Talayesva’s “Sun Chief” can be difficult to understand and near impossible to appreciate. At first glance to the casual reader it can appear shallow and ridiculous; a religion created around the wants and needs of the Hopi but not based on any empirical or even supposed sacred evidence. When coupled with The Sacred Canopy however, the reader begins to understand the simplistic beauty of their religion providing necessary guidance and support to the Hopi tribe. The reader also is able to relate to Don’s religion in terms of the love one has for his or her own dogma and the importance it plays in an individual’s life.

Sacred power (pg 16): Native Americans believed in spiritual powers and the natural world. Spiritual power for men were hunting and war.

In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.

The Apaches, like most Native Americans, have no written history other than that written by white men. But the story of the Apaches did not begin in the American Southwest but in the northwestern corner of North America, the western Subarctic region of Alaska and Canada. The Apache Indians belong to the southern branch of the Athabascan group, whose languages constitute a large family, with speakers in Alaska, western Canada, and American Southwest. The fact that the Apaches originated in the western mountainous Subarctic region makes their nomadic behavior after the arrival in the American Southwest more comprehensible; the tribes of the Southwest were highly mobile and moved from place to place depending on availability of food. They

The ritualistic practice of peyote and shamanism, are commonly linked, however in the case of the Mescalero Apache Tribe the use of peyote in shaman rites had anything but a transcendental effect which eventually lead to the abolishment of peyote from shamanistic ceremony. A lack of harmony

There is a deep relationship between the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two are so strong that it is embedded in their culture and history. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places expanded on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, specifically concentrating on ‘Place-names.’ When Basso first began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to ‘learn the names,’ because they held a special meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990: 54) Place-names are special names given to a specific locality where an event

Myths are of great importance in the Navajo community because it is believed that it was a way to connect to the Holy People. The myth helps recognize symbolized supernatural in chants, translates the meaning of songs, and explains the importance of the ritual objects (Lamphere 1969). For example, there is myth of the two heroes who had gone through some misfortunes but thanks to the supernatural’s aid, the two heroes created a

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.

The Apaches made a place for themselves in the Southwest at an extremely troublesome time in

The interactions with people and their gods from modern time are important to note and offer further evidence to support Paden’s idea of the social importance of myth. Common modern Indigenous practices include praying, smudging, speaking with an elder, offering tobacco or spending time in sacred places. The way that modern Indigenous peoples interact with their culture and histories is just as important as the way they have for thousands of years, and further proves how strong the power of Indigenous myth is due to mutual participation. Notably, it can be

Native Americans celebrate a lot of traditions but one of the most popular celebration is Pow wows. Pow wows are also a time to extend native american culture and preserve the rich heritage of american indians. According to the article, What is a Pow wow, “A pow wow is gathering for many different communities”. Native americans have a diverse culture. Some say that Pow wows stand for an “American Indian medicine man”. Pow wows celebrate people’s way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships, and making new ones.

Our study of Lenski focused on Lenski’s division of the history of society into five society types, and how the advancement of technology led to social inequality. In The Gods Must be Crazy, the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert would fall into Lenski’s Hunter-Gatherer society type. Lenski defines a Hunter-Gatherer society as a small, nomadic group of people who make use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation for food (Lenski 90). The Bushman use simple tools made of wood and bone. The video shows a bushman hunting with a wooden bow and arrow, as well as men and women gathering berries for food and plant roots for water. Lenski would also note that the Bushmen see themselves as one family group. There are only a few dozen of them, and they appear to all contribute to the communal upbringing of the tribe’s children. The communal family dynamic is also present in the education of the young. There does not appear to be one assigned teacher, and those who teach do not appear to be exclusive in who they teach. All able adults contribute to the group’s survival in whatever way they can, and all participate in passing on these skills to the children. In the video you see a Bushman showing the children what berries are good to eat and how to get water from the shavings of a plant root. The Bushmen have little control of their environment. Being so, Lenski would

Native Americans hold a type of esoteric concept that comes from their philosophy of preserving their environment as well as their kinship that ties them together (Access Genealogy, 2009). They not only have social ties, they are politically and religiously organized through their rituals, government, and other institutions (Access Genealogy, 2009). They work together to reside in a territorial area, and speak a common language (Access Genealogy, 2009). They are not characterized by any one certain structure (Access Genealogy, 2009). However, the society agrees on fundamental principles that bond together a certain social fabric (Access Genealogy, 2009). Different Native American tribes throughout the years have had different ideas, opinions, philosophies, which are not always predetermined by their past ancestors.

Keith H. Basso’s ethnographic research titled, To Give up on Words: Silence in Western Apache Culture is an investigation of situations when members of a certain Apache community in the western United States assume the state of silence as a form of social interaction. In this paper, I will first note details of the society under consideration and Basso’s interests in regards to the questions he is trying to answer. I will introduce some anthropological concepts that are suitable to the discussion, followed by Basso’s observations regarding silence in the Apache community, including his methods, arguments, and conclusion. Finally, I will evaluate Basso’s findings and deduce if the evidence supports the conclusion made; I will

McIntosh (2009) offers an intriguing case study, where the concepts of personhood, hegemony, and fractal recursivity are intertwined and played through the dynamics of Swahili-Giriama bordered ethnoreligious interactions. The Giriama geographical, social, religious, and linguistic subordination to the Swahili Muslims is the framework to negotiate, resist or submit to the hegemonic Swahili Islam. First, through personhood, the Giriama frame their religious actions and relations with the Swahilis. Their actions are collective and caused by external powers, rather than individualistically bounded and rational actors as the Swahilis. How Arabic in this case is perceived amplify this notion, as Swahilis take it to be accessible via learning and memorizing, and Giriama take it to be accessible through spirit possession by Muslim spirits. This reinforces their submission and lose of identity by adopting Arabic (p. 255). Second, hegemony plays a significant role in shaping how power is lived and replicated in daily life, to be accepted or rejected by the society. Therefore, Giriama attitude towards Swahili Muslims is exhibited in their refusal to submit to Islam and instead cherish their traditionalism, yet they oftentimes acknowledge Islam’s power and the potency of Arabic through divination and spirit possession. Third, fractal recursivity is shown through how the Giriama’s evident urbanity is opposed to them living on the margins of the city thus closer to the jungle and their