Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit

Description

Emerging in part from papers presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropological Society, Montreal, 1990, this collection of essays examines the concept of rebirth or reincarnation among Native American societies, from near the time of contact until the present day. Following a foreword by Gananath Obeyesekere that contrasts North American and Hindu/Buddhist/Jain beliefs, an introductory overview, and a chapter that summarizes the context, distribution, and variety of recorded belief, all of the papers chronicle some aspect of rebirth belief in a number of different cultures. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. Contents Acknowledgments Preface Foreword: Reincarnation Eschatologies and the Comparative Study of Religions 1 Introduction 2 Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit: Context, Distribution, and Variation 3 Saving the Souls: Reincarnation Beliefs of the Seventeenth-Century Huron 4 The Reincarnations of Thunder Cloud, A Winnebago Indian 5 Behind Inupiaq Reincarnation: Cosmological Cycling 6 From Foetus to Shaman: The Construction of an Inuit Third Sex 7 Born-Again Pagans: The Inuit Cycle of Spirits 8 The Name Never Dies: Greenland Inuit Ideas of the Person 9 Kutchin Concepts of Reincarnation 10 Reincarnation as a Fact of Life among Contemporary Dene Tha 11 The Concept of the Person and Reincarnation among the Kwakiutl Indians 12 Person, Time, and Being: Northwest Coast Rebirth in Comparative Perspective 13 Rebirth and Identity: Three Gitksan Cases of Pierced-Ear Birthmarks 14 Cultural Patterns in Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation among the Tlingit Indians of Southeastern Alaska 15 Alternate-Generation Equivalence and the Recycling of Souls: Amerindian Rebirth in Global Perspective 16 The Study of Reincarnation in Indigenous American Cultures: Some Comments Appendix. A Trait Index to North American Indian and Inuit Reincarnation Sources References Culture Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U W Y Z General Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Contributors