Native Lifeway Books
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Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing 
by Robert Wolff
- Explores the lifestyle of
indigenous peoples of the world who
exist in complete harmony with the natural world and with each other.
- Reveals a model of a society built on
trust, patience, and joy rather than anxiety, hurry, and acquisition.
- Shows how we can reconnect with the
ancient intuitive awareness of the world's original people.
Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist
on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be
the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The
Sng'oi--pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic--live without
cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place
where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet
these indigenous people--as do many other aboriginal groups--possess an
acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of
their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly
follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions
each day. Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned
their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to
love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal
and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even
more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic
qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original
Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have
wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and
challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity
within ourselves.
Paperback 197 pages, $15
|  | The
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers
Edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly
Hunting and gathering is humanity's first and most
successful
adaptation. Until 12,000 years ago, all humanity lived this way.
Surprisingly, in an increasingly urbanized and technological world
dozens of hunting and gathering societies have persisted and thrive
worldwide, resilient in the face of change, their ancient ways now
combined with the trappings of modernity. The Encyclopedia is divided
into three parts. The first contains case studies, by leading experts,
of over fifty hunting and gathering peoples, in seven major world
regions. There is a general introduction and an archaeological overview
for each region. Part II contains thematic essays on prehistory, social
life, gender, music and art, health, religion, and indigenous
knowledge. The final part surveys the complex histories of
hunter-gatherers' encounters with colonialism and the state, and their
ongoing struggles for dignity and human rights as part of the worldwide
movement of indigenous peoples.
Paperback, 511 pages, $ 35.00 |  | Pretty
Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows
by
Frank Bird Linderman
The feminine equivalent of Neihardt's Black Elk
Speaks. The
History Teacher.Pretty-shield, the legendary medicine woman of the
Crows, remembered what life was like on the Plains when the buffalo
were still plentiful. A powerful healer who was forceful, astute, and
compassionate, Pretty-shield experienced many changes as her formerly
mobile people were forced to come to terms with reservation life in the
late nineteenth century.Pretty-shield told her story to Frank Linderman
through an interpreter and using sign language. The lives,
responsibilities, and aspirations of Crow women are vividly brought to
life in these pages as Pretty-shield recounts her life on the Plains of
long ago. She speaks of the simple games and dolls of an Indian
childhood and the work of the girls and women setting up the lodges,
dressing the skins, picking berries, digging roots, and cooking.
Through her eyes we come to understand courtship, marriage, childbirth
and the care of babies, medicine-dreams, the care of the sick, and
other facets of Crow womanhood. Alma Snell and Becky Matthews provide a
new preface to this edition.
Paperback, 224 pages. $14.95 |  | The
Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway
by Basil
Johnson
From the strong oral culture of his own Ojibway Indian
heritage,
Basil Johnson presents the first collection by a Native American
scholar of legends and tales depicting manitous, mystical beings who
are divine and essential forces in the spiritual life of his people.
These lively, sometimes earthy stories teach about manitous who lived
in human form among the Ojibway in the early days, after Kitchi-Manitou
(the Great Mystery) created all things and Muzzu-Kummik-Quae (Mother
Earth) revealed the natural order of the world. With depth and humor,
Johnson tells how lasting tradition was brought to the Ojibway by four
half-human brothers, including Nana'b'oozoo (the beloved archetypal
being who means well but often blunders), and how people are helped and
hindered by other entities such as the manitous of the forests and
meadows, personal manitous and totems, mermen and merwomen, Pauguk (the
cursed Flying Skeleton) and the Weendigoes, famed and terrifying giant
cannibals.
"The stories are rich in detail and cultural meaning, and
quite literally cast a spell." Books in Canada
"Both exemplary original scholarship and a delightfully,
even
charmingly written set of stories that, although written for adults,
can be appreciated by those of any age, for, based on oral tradition,
they read as if they have voice." Booklist
Basil Johnson is an Ojibway scholar who lives in Ontario,
Canada,
on the Cape Croker Indian Reserve, where he spent part of his
childhood. A recipient of the order of Ontario and an honorary
doctorate from the University of Toronto, he speaks and writed in both
Ojibway and English, and is the author of numerous books, including Indian
School Days, Ojibway Ceremonies, Ojibway Heritage, Ojibway Tales, The
Bear-Walker and Other Stories, Mermaids and Medicine Women: Native
Myths and Legends, and Crazy Dave.
As he writes in this book, "The manitous were just as much a
reality as were trees, valleys, hills, and winds."
Paperback, 247 pages, $ 15.00 |  | Night
Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative
by Ignatia Broker
With the art of practiced storyteller, Ignatia Broker
recounts the
life of her great-great-grandmother, Night Flying Woman, who was born
in the the mid-nineteenth century and lived during a chaotic time of
enormous change, uprooting, and los for Minnesota's Ojibway. But this
story also tells of her people's great strength and continuity.
Ignatia Broker, who died in 1987, was a storyteller and
teacher in
the Ojibway tradition. In 1984 she recieved a Wonder Woman Foundation
awared honoring her as a woman striving for peace and equality.
"This remarkable book...deserves to be read aloud for
generations to come." Minneapolis Star & Tribune
"A book everyone should read. It lights a fire of warmth
within me." Marge Dalve, White Earth Band Ojibway
"This beautiful book is a blessing, a gift, an antidote for
all
the poisonous lies about our past that we have had to endure. It is
full of courage, and love. This is how it really
was." Beverly Slapin and Doris Seale, Books Without Bias:
Through Indian Eyes
"Ignatia Broker writes with the beauty of Ojibway female
oral style...[a] poignant tale." Choice
From the text: "I...will search my memory and tell what I
know. I,
myself, shall tell you what I have heard my grandmother tell and I
shall try to speak in the way she did and use the words that were
hers."
Paperback, 135 pages, $ 13.00 |  | Never
in Anger: Portrait Of an Eskimo Family
by Jean L Briggs
From 1963-65 the anthropologist author lived in an igloo
with the
Utku Eskimo family who adopted her. Written in autobiographical form,
rich with insight into the emotional and family lives of an Old Way
People Peppered with tidbits on physical lifestyle and culture. Through
vignettes of daily life she unfolds a warm and perceptive tale of the
behavioral patterns of the Utku, their way of training children, and
their handling of deviations from desired behavior.
"Absorbingly and affectingly written. A remarkable
book...one that
bids to become an anthropological classic" - Publishers' Weekly.
Paperback, 379 pages, $ 21.00 |  | Voices
of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime by
Robert Lawlor
Almost totally annihilated by a systematic genocide and the
theft
of their homelands, the Australian Aborigines met Western colonialism
with a culture that had flourished in continuous harmony with the Earth
for more than 100,000 years. From this culture and its Dreamtime
revelation comes a revisioning of the Golden Age of Mankind. Robert
Lawlor asks us to suspend our values, prejudices and Eurocentrism and
step into the Dreaming - to walk with our most ancient human ancestors
into the First Day to discover:
- A people who rejected agriculture, architecture, writing,
clothing, and the subjugation of animals.
- A lifestyle of hunting and gathering that provided
abundant food of unsurpassed nutritional value.
- Initiatic and ritual practices that hold the orgins of all
esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanistic traditions.
- A sexual and emotional life that afforded diversity and
fludity as well as martial and social stability.
- A people who valued kinship, community, and the law of the
Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions."
- Language whose richness of structure and vocabulary
reveals new worlds of perception and comprehension.
- A people balanced between the Dreaming and the perceivable
world, in harmony with all species and living each day as the First
Day.
More than 150 color and duotone illustrations. Voices of the
First
Day is illustrated throughout with drawings, fine art reproductions,
and photographs. Many of these photographs are among the earliest ever
made of Aboriginal people and are shown here for the first time.
Large-format paperback, 412 pages. $30.00 |  | Daughters
of Copper Woman
by Anne Cameron
The legends and life stories of the Nootka of Vancouver
Island
told by the few remaining Elderwomen of a secret sisterhood to their
young apprentice. Potent with imagery and the strength of womanhood and
survival.
In this retelling of Northwest Coast Native creation myths,
Anne
Cameron has woven together the lives of legendary and historical
characters to create a sublime image of the social and spiritual power
of women. The book was a groundbreaking bestseller when the first
edition appeared in 1981 and became and underground classic, selling
more thena 200,000 copies in many languages.
At the heart of this new edition is the entire next of the
original but with important editions. In the years since Daughters
of Copper Woman
went out of print, the author has added fresh material and a new
preface. The result is a new, complete version of a book that has
touched a nerve in readers throughout the world.
"The oral traditions committed to print here preserve their
simplicity of theme and directness of expression. They lose nothing of
the sense of inherent wisdom, courage and foresight characterized in
the society of women from Vancouver Island." - The Guardian
Paperback, 199 pages. $14.00 |  | The
Mishomis Book: The Voice of the Ojibway
by Edward
Benton-Banai
Mishomis is the Ojibway word for grandfather. This is one of
those
very rare books that makes you feel as though you are listening to a
wise elder. Includes the creation story, the origin of sacred plants,
and a wealth of information on Native values and culture.
Edward Benton Banai is the Ojibway teacher and spiritual
leader
who founded the Red School House, an alternative school for Native
students in St. Paul, Minnesota. His goal in writing The Mishomis Book
was to provide students with an accurate account of Ojibway culture,
history, and worldview based on the oral teachings.
This book begins with the Ojibway creation story and how
first man
came to earth. The fifteen chapters cover the traditional teachings
about the acquisition of fire and tools, the creation and meaning of
the clan system, the migration of the Ojibway people from the Atlantic
Coast to their present locations in Canada and the United States.
The final chapter describes more resent history. Throughout
the
book, the author includes the use of Ojibway words and their meanings,
as well as helpful maps and illustrations. Other major topics covered
include the four directions, the pipe, the Midewiwin and Sweat Lodge,
the Seven Fires prophesy, and the Seven Grandfathers Teaching, values
and beliefs, and the role of Elders.
Oversize
paperback, illustrated. 114 pages. $24.00 |  | A
Dictionary of the Ojibway (Chippewa) Language
by Frederic
Baraga
It is said that one must know a Native language to know the
Native
Way. This text, first published 140 years ago, is a thorough coverage
of the Native tongue spoken over the greatest area of the continent.
English-Ojibway and Ojlbway-English sections. Also useful for
Potawotamie, Ottawa, Cree. and other closely related Algonquian
dialects.
Paperback. 422 pages. $25.00 |  | A
Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe
by Nichols &
Nyholm
The most up-to-date complement to Baraga's (1853) classic
work;
contains 7,000 of the most frequently used words, both ancient and 20th
century additions. Presented in Ojibew-English and English-Ojibwe
sections, this dictionary spells words to reflect their actual
pronunciations with a direct match between the letters used and the
speech sounds of Ojibwe. Included are many ancient words and meanings
as well as language added in the twentieth century. It is an essential
reference for all students of Ojibwe culture, history, language and
literature.
Paperback, 288 pages. $15.00 |  | Chippewa
Customs
by Frances Densmore
The result of turn-of-the-century field research, this book
gives
a detailed accounting of the craft, family, and ritual-spiritual life
of these people.
Frances Densmore, born in 1867, was one of the first
ethnologists
to specialize in the study of Native music and culture. Her book, first
published in 1929, remains an authoritative source for the tribal
history, customs, legends, traditions, art, music, economy, and leisure
activities of the Chippewa.
Paperback, 204 pages. $13.00 |  | Two
Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival
by Velma Wallis
Based on an Athabascan Native legend passed along for many
generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River area in
Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational
tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter
famine. Though these two women have been known to complain more than
contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In
simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of
life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old
women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story
of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness will carve out a
permanent place in readers' imaginations.
Winner of the 1993 Western Staes Book Award and 1994 Pacific
Northwest Booksellers Award.
"A beautiful and moving book. Velma Wallis's writing is as
lean
and muscular, as full of unexpected bounties, as the far north, and
readers are sure to be delighted with Two Old Women"
- Washington Post
Paperback, 140 pages. $9.00 |  | Kitchi-Gami:
Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway
by Johann Georg Kohl
This classic 1855 book on the Ojibway of Lake Superior is a
fascinating study in contrasts and similarities. Its author was an
urbane, well-traveled European, a trained ethnologist, and an
accomplished popular writer. Kohl turned his sensitive powers of
observation on a nation of people he found not unlike his own.
Perceptively and elegantly, he describes daily life among the Ojibway,
detailing religious practices, legends, foods, games, medicines, homes,
clothing, and methods of travel, hunting, and fished. Kohl's gentle
humor and candor, and his respect for the Ojibway people, anticipate
later developments in American ethnology and make his writing
especially appealing to the modern reader.
This Borealis edition of Kitchi-Gami includes a new
introduction
by Robert E. Bieder, who sketches Kohl's career and explains how Kohl's
German background contributed to the unique insights that characterized
his work. A new appendix includes five stories of Menaboju, the
legendary Ojibway trickster, originally published in the German edition
of 1859 but unavailable in English until now.
Paperback, 477 pages. $17.00 |  | America
B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World
by Barry Fell
Druids in Vermont? Phoenicians in Iowa before the time of
Julius
Caesar? The first major work to penetrate the mystery of America's
remote past
It has long been taken for granted that the first European
visitors to American shores either sailed with Columbus in 1492, or may
have been Norsemen like Leif Erikson a full five centuries eariler. But
the history of our land before that date has so far remained lost in
native legends.
Now Harvard professor Barry Fell has uncovered evidence to
replace
those legends with myth-shattering fact. With illuminating text and
over 100 pictures, he describes ancient European temple inscriptions
from New England and the Midwest that date as far back as 800 B.C. He
examines the phallic and other sexually oriented structures, found in
our own country, that reveal the beliefs of ancient Celtic fertility
cults - cults that were virtually destroyed in Europe in early
Christian times. Further evidence has been found in the tombs of kinds
and chiefs, in the form of steles - written testimonies of grief carved
in stone.
"Now, thanks to the genius of a single man...we must include
in
our American hertage fighting Celts from Spain and daring Semitic
seafarers from Carthage, Libya, and Egypt. Who knows how many others
will be added before the end of Barry Fell's epic voyage into the
past?" - Reader's Digest
Rare out of print book, used, Paperback, 311 pages, $20 |
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