Description
Book SynopsisExamines the concept of place in the language, social structure, and ritual of southeast Alaska's Tlingit Indians. This book makes a contribution to the literature on the Tlingit, the Northwest Coast cultural area, Native American and indigenous studies, and to the social scientific and humanistic literature on space, place, and landscape.
Trade Review"Being and Place Among the Tlingit provides an excellent grounding in indigenous environmental values and how they operate in society. The book will almost certainly become a standard text for Northwest Coast anthropologists, human geographers, even archaeologists, for whom Thornton's discussion of material symbols, such as Chilkat blankets, will serve as a useful reminder of the ways artifacts can actively reference people and places. Finally, because it is a well written book, brimming with helpful examples of the politics of place-making, it will interest scholars studying human-landscape interactions in diverse regions of the globe."
* The Northern Review *
"This thoroughly researched, well-organized, and well-written book is a pioneering study of the ethnography of the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast. Its methods and many of its conclusions could fruitfully be used in studying the toponymy of the Aboriginal nations of coastal British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. It would work well as a text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropology and First Nations studies. It will also be an invaluable resource for the Tlingit people themselves."
* BC Studies *
"Thomas Thornton takes the reader on a rich journey into the physical and social landscape of Southeast Alaska. . . . a solid work of ethnography grounded in serious scholarship but written in a language that will also be accessible to most readers."
* Alaska History *
"This book is about the meaning of place among the Tlingit, but it is also a comprehensive, scholarly essay on the ideal of place in Western philosophy and social science theory."
* Journal of Anthropological Research *
Table of ContentsTlingit Spelling and Pronunciation Guide
Preface
1. Introduction: Place and Tlingit Senses of Being
2. Know Your Place: The Social Organization of Geographic Knowledge
3. What's in a Name? Place and Cognition
4. Production and Place: "It was easy for me to put up fish there"
5. Ritual as Emplacement: The Potlatch / Ku.eex'
6. Conclusion: Toward an Anthropology of Place
Appendix: Tlingit Resources with Seasonality
Notes
Bibliography
Index
