A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos is a careful analysis and translation of five Highland Maya títulos composed in the sixteenth century by the Nija’ib’ K’iche’ of Guatemala. The Spanish conquest of Highland Guatemala entailed a series of sweeping changes to indigenous society, not the least of which were the introduction of the Roman alphabet and the imposition of a European system of colonial government. Introducing the history of these documents and placing them within the context of colonial-era Guatemala, this volume provides valuable information concerning colonial period orthographic practice, the K’iche’ language, and language contact in Highland Guatemala.
For each text, author Mallory E. Matsumoto provides a photographic copy of the original document, a transliteration of its sixteenth-century modified Latin script, a transcription into modern orthography, an extensive morphologic analysis, and a line-by-line translation into English, as well as separate prose versions of the transcription and translation. No complete English translation of this set of manuscripts has been available before, nor has any Highland Maya título previously received such extensive analytical treatment.
Offering insight into the reality of indigenous Highland communities during this period, Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos is an important primary source for linguists, historians, and experts in comparative literature. It will also be of significant interest to students and scholars of ethnohistory, linguistics, Latin American studies, anthropology, and archaeology.
Since the days of the Spanish Conquest, the indigenous populations of Andean Bolivia have struggled to preserve their textile-based writings. This struggle continues today, both in schools and within the larger culture. The Metamorphosis of Heads explores the history and cultural significance of Andean textile writings--weavings and kipus (knotted cords), and their extreme contrasts in form and production from European alphabet-based texts. Denise Arnold examines the subjugation of native texts in favor of European ones through the imposition of homogenized curricula by the Educational Reform Law. As Arnold reveals, this struggle over language and education directly correlates to long-standing conflicts for land ownership and power in the region, since the majority of the more affluent urban population is Spanish speaking, while indigenous languages are spoken primarily among the rural poor. <I>The Metamorphosis of Heads</I> acknowledges the vital importance of contemporary efforts to maintain Andean history and cultural heritage in schools, and shows how indigenous Andean populations have incorporated elements of Western textual practices into their own textual activities.
Based on extensive fieldwork over two decades, and historical, anthropological, and ethnographic research, Denise Arnold assembles an original and richly diverse interdisciplinary study. The textual theory she proposes has wider ramifications for studies of Latin America in general, while recognizing the specifically regional practices of indigenous struggles in the face of nation building and economic globalization.
He examines in depth Henry Timberlake’s 1765 translation of a Cherokee war song that was probably the first printed English rendering of a Native American "poem." He discusses early-nineteenth-century textualizers and translators who saw in Native American verbal art a literature manqué that they could transform into a fully realized literature, with particular attention to the work of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indian agent and pioneer field collector who developed this approach to its fullest. He discusses the "scientific" textualizers of the late nineteenth century who viewed Native American discourse as a data source for historical, ethnographic, and linguistic information, and he examines the work of Natalie Curtis, whose field research among the Hopis helped to launch a wave of interest in Native Americans and their verbal art that continues to the present.
In addition, Clements addresses theoretical issues in the textualization, translation, and anthologizing of American Indian oral expression. In many cases the past records of Native American expression represent all we have left of an entire verbal heritage; in most cases they are all that we have of a particular heritage at a particular point in history. Covering a broad range of materials and their historical contexts, Native American Verbal Art identifies the agendas that have informed these records and helps the reader to determine what remains useful in them. It will be a welcome addition to the fields of Native American studies and folklore.
By recovering the literatures and textual practices that were indigenous to the Americas, Birgit Brander Rasmussen reimagines the colonial conflict as one organized by alternative but equally rich forms of literacy. From central Mexico to the northeastern shores of North America, in the Andes and across the American continents, indigenous peoples and European newcomers engaged each other in dialogues about ways of writing and recording knowledge. In Queequeg's Coffin, such exchanges become the foundation for a new kind of early American literary studies.
While the Diné (those from the four sacred mountains in Dinétah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm Diné and Dene kinship. She explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the Diné and Dene across time and space through re-storying of relations.
*A complex Diné worldview and philosophy that cannot be defined with one word in the English language. Hózhǫ́ means to continually strive for harmony, beauty, balance, peace, and happiness, but most importantly the Diné have a right to it.
Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala explores the intersections between Indigenous literature and social movements over the past thirty years through the lens of insurgent poetics. Author Hannah Burdette is interested in how Indigenous literature and social movements are intertwined and why these phenomena arise almost simultaneously in disparate contexts across the Americas.
Literature constitutes a key weapon in political struggles as it provides a means to render subjugated knowledge visible and to envision alternatives to modernity and coloniality. The surge in Indigenous literature and social movements is arguably one of the most significant occurrences of the twenty-first century, and yet it remains understudied. Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala bridges that gap by using the concept of Abiayala as a powerful starting point for rethinking inter-American studies through the lens of Indigenous sovereignty.
Munro S. Edmonson, volume editor
The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the single most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, Victoria Reifler Bricker, well-known cultural anthropologist, was elected to be general editor.
This third volume of the Supplement is devoted to the aboriginal literatures of Mesoamerica, a topic receiving little attention in the original Handbook. According to the general editor, "This volume does more than supplement and update the coverage of Middle American Indian literatures in the Handbook. It breaks new ground by defining the parameters of a new interdisciplinary field in Middle American Indian studies."
The aim of the present volume is to consider literature from five Middle American Indian languages: Nahuatl, Yucatecan Maya, Quiche, Tzotzil, and Chorti. The first three literatures are well documented for both the Classical and Modern variants of their languages and are obvious candidates for inclusion in this volume. The literatures of Tzotzil and Chorti, on the other hand, are oral, and heretofore little has been written of their genres and styles.
Taken together, these essays represent a substantial contribution to the Handbook series, with the volume editor's introduction placing in geographic perspective the five literatures chosen as representative of the Middle American literary tradition.
As part of the larger, ongoing movement throughout Latin America to reclaim non-Hispanic cultural heritages and identities, indigenous writers in Mexico are reappropriating the written word in their ancestral tongues and in Spanish. As a result, the long-marginalized, innermost feelings, needs, and worldviews of Mexico's ten to twenty million indigenous peoples are now being widely revealed to the Western societies with which these peoples coexist. To contribute to this process and serve as a bridge of intercultural communication and understanding, this groundbreaking, three-volume anthology gathers works by the leading generation of writers in thirteen Mexican indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Maya, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tabasco Chontal, Purepecha, Sierra Zapoteco, Isthmus Zapoteco, Mazateco, Ñahñu, Totonaco, and Huichol.
Volume 1 contains narratives and essays by Mexican indigenous writers. Their texts appear first in their native language, followed by English and Spanish translations. Frischmann and Montemayor have abundantly annotated the English, Spanish, and indigenous-language texts and added glossaries and essays that trace the development of indigenous texts, literacy, and writing. These supporting materials make the anthology especially accessible and interesting for nonspecialist readers seeking a greater understanding of Mexico's indigenous peoples.
The other volumes of this work will be Volume 2: Poetry/Poesía and Volume 3: Theater/Teatro.
As part of the larger, ongoing movement throughout Latin America to reclaim non-Hispanic cultural heritages and identities, indigenous writers in Mexico are reappropriating the written word in their ancestral tongues and in Spanish. As a result, the long-marginalized, innermost feelings, needs, and worldviews of Mexico's ten to twenty million indigenous peoples are now being widely revealed to the Western societies with which these peoples coexist. To contribute to this process and serve as a bridge of intercultural communication and understanding, this groundbreaking, three-volume anthology gathers works by the leading generation of writers in thirteen Mexican indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Maya, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tabasco Chontal, Purepecha, Sierra Zapoteco, Isthmus Zapoteco, Mazateco, Ñahñu, Totonaco, and Huichol.
Volume Two contains poetry by Mexican indigenous writers. Their poems appear first in their native language, followed by English and Spanish translations. Montemayor and Frischmann have abundantly annotated the Spanish, English, and indigenous-language texts and added glossaries and essays that discuss the formal and linguistic qualities of the poems, as well as their place within contemporary poetry. These supporting materials make the anthology especially accessible and interesting for nonspecialist readers seeking a greater understanding of Mexico's indigenous peoples.
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