Journal of the Southwest articles from December 2004

Journal of the Southwest archives from December 2004

Introduction: New World ancientness.
December 22, 2004... One way of approaching this collection is to consider the irony of its title. For the essays here examine myths from worlds not really new and invoke a collective memory that may arguably reach as far back as the Bible. Yet we persist in...

Introduction: the parable and the painting.
December 22, 2004... From our conference I learned one way for mythologies to persist in Native American communities as things told in words, and one way for native individuals honorably to make money from them. The two are separate but not incompatible....

Myth, belief, narration, image: reflections on Mesoamerican mythology.
December 22, 2004... A PROPOSITION FOR THE INTERCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE A meeting of specialists in the study of different American mythologies gives a rare opportunity to exchange knowledge. Each person present takes a particular approach to a particular...

Truth dwells in the deeps: southwestern oral traditions and archaeological interpretations.
December 22, 2004... There is considerable scholarly discussion on the feasibility of using American Indian traditional narratives or oral traditions as data in archaeological interpretations (Anyon et al. 1997; Echo-Hawk 2000; Mason 2000; Schaafsma and Schaafsma...

"A continual beginning, and then an ending, and then a beginning again": Hopi apocalypticism in the new age.
December 22, 2004... In January and February 1997, a series of press releases datelined "Hotevilla, AZ" and issued by the Hotevilla Priesthood Assembly took issue with "new-age interpretation and appropriation of Hopi religious practices." The assembly announced...

A Levi-Straussian controversy revisited: the implicit mythology of rituals in a Mesoamerican context.
December 22, 2004... During the last fifty years, French anthropology has been so greatly influenced by Claude Levi-Strauss that it is almost a truism to point this out again. Nevertheless, this influence has never been constant, despite an apparent surrounding...

Squirrel reddens his cheeks: cognition, recognition, and poetic production in the ancient Navajo stories.
December 22, 2004... Although its vision of reality can easily be questioned, something intrinsically appealing underlies myth at its best. However fanciful and beyond literal belief the story, a deep truth emerges that arouses a shared sense of recognition. We may...

Temptation and glory in one Pima and two Aztec mythologies.
December 22, 2004... Sometimes, it is not clear how often, the keepers of tradition in tribal societies organized the whole of their knowledge of ancientness into single oral "books"--books which they might never speak out entirely and which, because of their...

How to win in defeat, or to the victor belong the spoils but the loser gets immortality.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2004... I propose to compare two culture heroes with the intent of examining how each hero attained his status and what it meant to his culture. By culture hero I mean someone who embodies the assumptions and ideals of his culture and whose deeds...