Spirit of Siberia

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Michael W. Young

A note on orthography -- "Trobriand Islands" by Bronislaw Malinowski -- Samarai, "gate to the field" -- Picturing the ethnographer -- Touluwa, chief of Omarakana -- Coral gardens and their harvests -- Dancing at Milamala -- "Physical types" and "personalities" -- "Magic" -- Fishing and canoes of the lagoon -- "Village scenes" -- Women's domain -- "The children's republic" -- Mortuary rites and exchanges -- Masawa canoes and the kula quest -- "Black and white" -- Appendix 1 : Malinowski’s photographic equipment -- Appendix 2 : the numbering of the collection.

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Unaisi Nabobo-Baba

In Knowing and Learning: An Indigenous Fijian Approach, author Unaisi Nabobo-Baba has employed a decolonized 'vanua research' method to explore how her people, those of Vugalei, in southeastern Vitilevu, acquire and transmit knowledge. By documenting the various dimensions of knowledge and their value and applications in Vugalei society, the author enables the indigenous voice to be heard. Nabobo-Baba's finding have obvious implications for formal education models - and she discusses how they impinge on evrything from school architecture to teaching methods, curriculum development and educational research, and how they go some way toward explaining the apparent failures of the past affirmative action strategies. This ground-breaking book provides an 'insiders' view of how an idigenous society percieves itself and the world around it, and is set to raise the level of debate on the development of Fiji as a post-colonial nation.

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Ada Gabucci

This pocket-size reference draws on the vast treasures of this ancient civilization to illustrate the remarkable achievements of one of the great empires of the West, from the traditional date of Rome's founding - 754 B.C. - -until the fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 476, the year in which the last emperor, the boy Romulus Augustus, was deposed by the Goths and the imperial insignia was sent to Constantinople. Rome opens with a section on the major personages, such as Romulus and Remus, Pompey, and Constantine; each concise biography is complemented by full-color reproductions of portraits, ivories, coins, and monuments. A section on power and public life includes the grain dole, the army, the city's archives, and its imperial triumphs. A chapter on religion considers the major gods and cults, "Oriental" rites, and Christianity. The chapter devoted to daily life includes makeup, gambling, and portraiture, and is followed by a section on funerals and the dead. A section on the layout of the city is a must-read for any tourist to Rome. The book includes a map of the ancient city, a chronology, accounts of the major museums, an index, and a bibliography.

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Colette A. Hyman

A tiny pair of beaded deerskin moccasins, given to a baby in 1913, provides the starting point for this thoughtful examination of the work of Dakota women. Mary Eastman Faribault, born in Minnesota, made them almost four decades after the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. This and other ornately decorated objects created by Dakota women—cradleboards, clothing, animal skin containers—served more than a utilitarian function. They tell the story of colonization, genocide, and survival. Author Colette Hyman traces the changes in the lives of Dakota women, starting before the arrival of whites and covering the fur trade, the years of treaties and shrinking lands, the brutal time of removal, starvation, and shattered families after 1862—and then the transition to reservation life, when missionaries and government agents worked to turn the Dakota into Christian farmers. The decorative work of Dakota women reflected all of this: native organic dyes and quillwork gave way to beading and needlework, items traditionally decorated for family gifts were produced to sell to tourists and white collectors, work on cradleboards and animal skin bags shifted to the ornamenting of hymnals and the creation of star quilts. Through it all, the work of Dakota women proclaims and retains Dakota identity: it is a testament to the endurance of Dakota traditions, to the survival of the Dakota in exile, and—most vividly—to the role of women in that survival. -- from back cover.