Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache
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- Indian Culture
- The Apache Indians
- history
- nonfiction
Product Description
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to hear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place regularly and rather carelessly when we reflect of scenery or home or literature. Our senses of place, but, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist, explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names—where they come from and what they mean to Apaches.
“This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith Basso gives us to know something about the sacred and indivisible scenery of words and place. And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words.”—N. Scott Momaday
“In Wisdom Sits in Places Keith Basso lifts a veil on the most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the world. In so doing he invests his erudition with that rarest of scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration. Through his clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their land, and when we look away, we see our own world afresh.”—William deBuys
“A very exciting book—authoritative, fully informed, extremely thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read. Guiding us vividly among the landscapes and related tale-tellings of the Western Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of language in the complex but compelling theme of a people’s attachment to place. An vital book by an eminent scholar.”—Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
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This book was mediocre at best. Although Keith Basso did provide some insight into why the Apache people cherish their land, I felt that Basso kept on adage the exact same thing in every sentence. I had the point of the entire book by the time I was ten pages into it, and it kept on going, therefore building me lose my concentration on what I was reading.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
a wonderful book about a topic which most people would never grasp due to curtural differences. A must read if you care about the native culture.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Keith Basso has written a wonderful book about the Western Apache people and their use of place names to tell tales, convey history and enforce cultural norms and taboos. The book is a cross between an anthropoligical study and humorous ancedoteds and the outcome is wonderfully entertaining and educational
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
It was indeed fascinating to learn about the Western Apache’s way of communicating and relations to the land in weight with their history and tale telling. Once the leader involves characters interactions in his book, there is much information to learn and the read is enjoyable.
But then he goes on to his own analytical interpretations that can take up to 14 pages over just one sentence. And it is not any new information either. He tends to repeat himself, or clarify his previously written and expressed thoughts in a more expanded or renewed analysis.
For example, in chapter 3 he shared a coded conversation between three women. He interrupted them with scholarly reports and findings that circled over a same point for most of the chapter. And only by the end of the chapter he finally interpreted, decoded and clarified the conversation between the three women.
As a student in Organizational Communication, my professors cannot stress enough that the most vital aspect of writing, is to place out your thoughts clearly and readable, lacking building the sentences too wordy or cluttered with technical phrases.
As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but reflect that it would be a bring shame on if Western Apache people would not have been able to read this book due to its complex language. It is in fact their first past account. According to the leader, not too many Western Apaches have been as literate in the “ways of the white men”. So why write a book about them, which they would not even been able to read?
Overall, I’m glad this book was written. It brought out the culture of Western Apaches in an extremely appealing light. Their wisdom and their life style very well surpasses many aspects of a common “white man”. For instance, once I read this book, I no longer viewed Native American’s respect for scenery as some New Age obsession. It really made sense to me why it is vital to respect the land. For one, people don’t seem to realize that the land and us are connected and intertwined in my areas. Our society is more concerned about saving time and gas to go grocery shopping, so we erect dozens of supermarkets and stores like Walmart on every confront, lacking any thought behind concerning the importance of the land and its tale. So the book helps to know the importance of human relations to objects, scenery and places. Why it is vital to keep cultures alive and how to respect more traditionally oriented ones.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
In this book, Keith Basso presents the Western Apache at Cibecue. His decades long interaction with these gentle, articulate people provides us with an intimate and respectful view of a powerful tradition among them: the invocation of place names to educate, elucidate, and even entertain. Place names are normally highly descriptive: one can easily identify and know why a certain place has the name it does. But the real power of the place name is less in its description than in the anecdote accompanying the name. These anecdotes teach some vital moral lesson. By merely invoking the name, the lesson is recalled and no one is directly humiliated, scolded, shamed. The lesson to be learned is played out by the characters in the tale and hence depersonalized. In this gentle, non-threatening way, individuals are taught the vital lessons of living successfully within the culture of the Western Apache. We would do well adopt this tradition into our own culture and start training our children in ways that erect up as a replacement for of ways that bring shame on and tear down.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5