This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture.
Josephy, Jr..
An important book by an eminent scholar."--Alvin M.
Guiding us vividly Among the landscapes and related story-tellings of the Western Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of Language in the complex but compelling theme of a people\'s attachment to place.
Through his clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their land, and when we look away, we see our own world afresh."--William deBuys "A very exciting book--authoritative, fully informed, extremely thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read.
In so doing he invests his scholarship with that rarest of scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration.
Scott Momaday "In "Wisdom Sits in Places" Keith Basso lifts a veil on the most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the world.
Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words."--N.
And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe.
Keith Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place.
But it is more than that. "This is indeed a brilliant exposition of Landscape and Language in the world of the Western Apache.
For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork Among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names--where they come from and what they mean to Apaches. "Wisdom Sits in Places," the first sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist, explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona.
Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures.
Most of us use the term "sense of place" often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature.
Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture
