Philip P. Arnold, The Urgency of Indigenous Values (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2023), 269 pp., $29.95 (e-book), ISBN: 978-0-8156-5690-6.

sources whenever possible. Had Winde’s contributions stopped there, he would have made a valuable contribution to the fields of Salzburger and early Georgia studies, but his work stands not only at the end of an historiographical trail but at the beginning of one also, and Kleckley’s translation opens up the field even more widely. Although written in 1961, the dissertation has been unavailable in any published form until this edition and never before in English at all. Nevertheless, scholars like George Fenwick Jones, who wrote two monographs on the Salzburgers and other Germans in early Georgia in the 1980s and 1990s, utilized it, and so Winde’s work has indirectly made its way into English-language historiography. Kleckley’s translation will undoubtedly increase Winde’s importance even more as non-German reading scholars (such as myself) continue to study the rich history of early Georgia. Winde’s work also has the historiographical advantage of fitting into two currently active fields in the early modern era: Atlantic History and Networking History. Winde’s work contains direct and detailed information about many of the individuals involved in the Lutheran (and broader Georgia) settlements and allows scholars to make network connections between individuals that more general works would not. Although written in a bit of a stilted style (as are most dissertations), the translation Kleckley has provided is easily readable by the general public and scholar alike. Being a dissertation, it contains copious citations useful to scholars, but Winde also provided clear sections within his work that make the examination easy to follow. Scholars of early Georgia will find this edition essential to their research, and all will find it a very human telling of an engaging Atlantic World story from the eighteenth century.

The spread of Covid-19 among the vulnerable indigenous populations of Amazonia has produced complex moral and spiritual issues that have demanded creative and cooperative solutions. The Baniwa indigenous peoples of the Northwest Amazon pin the spread of the pandemic on the failure of humans to observe respectful relations with the spirit-people of the environment. Ritual specialists typically believe that the pandemic is due to humans having violated the original instructions, remembered in initiation ceremonies and reinforced throughout a lifetime. Consequently, they further believe, the spirit-people of the environment retaliate by inflicting sicknesses, including the Covid-19 pandemic. To reverse the damage, a strong movement of healthcare led by indigenous women has promoted a revitalization of the use of herbal medicines together with healing practices and the traditional teachings of the initiation rites for men and women.

The spread of Covid-19 among the vulnerable indigenous populations of Amazonia has produced complex moral and spiritual issues that have demanded creative and cooperative solutions. The Baniwa indigenous peoples of the Northwest Amazon pin the spread of the pandemic on the failure of humans to observe respectful relations with the spirit-people of the environment. Ritual specialists typically believe that the pandemic is due to humans having violated the original instructions, remembered in initiation ceremonies and reinforced throughout a lifetime. Consequently, they further believe, the spirit-people of the environment retaliate by inflicting sicknesses, including the Covid-19 pandemic. To reverse the damage, a strong movement of healthcare led by indigenous women has promoted a revitalization of the use of herbal medicines together with healing practices and the traditional teachings of the initiation rites for men and women.

This article reviews the principal tendencies in the contemporary studies of indigenous South American religious traditions. It divides the field into studies of socioreligious formations (particularistic and universalistic formations, more specifically) and studies of cosmologies or worldviews (so-called perspectivism). It then discusses two recent, pioneering biographies of South American shamans which, more than any other in the field, offer original approaches to understanding shamanic historical consciousness, cosmopolitics, the constant struggles of shamanic spirits to sustain the cosmos against sorcery spirits that threaten to undermine the cosmic order.

Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (trans. Nicholas Elliott and Allison Dundy; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), xvii + 622 pp. [First published as La chute du ciel: Paroles d’un chaman yanomami (Paris: Plon, 2010)], $39.95 (Harvard); $28.83, ISBN 978-0-674-72468-6.

Indigenous prophet movements in the Americas have historically engaged the most threatening and dangerous Other, the White Man. The savants of the Northwest Amazon region of South America have mostly sought to defy the destructive power of the White Man’s knowledge by disclosing hidden, internal sources of conmict and conserving religious traditions. A long succession of prophetic leaders from the mid-nineteenth century to the present has sustained the continuity of ancestral traditions even at great risk to the leaders’ lives. I take a multiplex, interpretive approach to these shamanic traditions, grounded in the exegesis of their ancestral practices.

This paper explores the meanings of “Body” and “Spirit” in relation to one of the most important personages in Hohodene cosmology, the spirit “Owner of Sickness and Sorcery”, named Kuwai.{“Yurupary” in lingua geral] This great spirit is an extraordinarily complex synthesis of the Hohodene (and other Baniwa, northern Arawak-speaking peoples) worldview. His “Body” was full of holes from which the breath of his soul produced a very large range of sounds, melodies, and song. All of these sounds correspond to primordial ancestral songs; they refer to core values and processes in Hohodene society: kinship vs affines, sorcery vs healers, the first ancestors (who were not yet fully human) and their relations. Taken as a whole, the Body of Kuwai, later transformed by the Creator Father Nhiaperikuli into sacred musical flutes and trumpets, can be understood as the instruments for reproducing ‘society’ and the ‘universe’. Thus, this paper explores the Hohodene “musical body of the universe”. In my interpretation, I seek to unravel multiple layers of meaning related to this figure by utilizing native exegeses that connect narratives, graphic representations (including petroglyphs), shamanic cures and visions, sacred geography, and sacred chants. I hope to show that Hohodene notions of Self, Cosmos, and History are intertwined in an all-encompassing multiplicity of living entities into one material and spiritual “Body”.

Este artigo discute as conexoes entre a mitologia e a musica dos grupos indigenas Guahari Diputiro Pora e Hohodene , na regiao do Alto Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brasil. O sib Desana Guahari Diputiro Pora originalmente habitava o Rio Papuri, um braco do Rio Uaupes, na regiao do Alto Rio Negro. Atualmente algumas pessoas do sib vivem em Iauarete. As fratrias Baniwa , denominadas Hohodene e Walipere-dakenai vivem no Rio Icana, um tributario do Rio Aiari. A mitologia e os repertorios musicais sao compartilhados pelos grupos da regiao em diferentes versoes. A pesquisa se baseou em dialogos com o baya , especialista em cantos e mitos, em Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira e em Iauarete. A pesquisa tambem se baseou em uma longa vivencia com os pajes (xamas) do rio Aiari. Atraves de entrevistas, gravacoes e filmagens das sessoes, e com mais de tres decadas de aprendizado sobre as tradicoes Hohodene , sao mostradas as conexoes fundamentais entre identidade coletiva, os instrumentos sagrados, a origem mitologica dos clas, o processo de dinâmica da criacao e transmissao da identidade atraves da musica por geracoes, e o processo de pesquisa etnomusicologica colaborativa estabelecido entre as comunidades indigenas, as instituicoes de pesquisa e ONGs. Este trabalho tambem apresenta aspectos da origem humana atraves da performance musical e do rito. Primeiramente serao apresentados os mitos de criacao e das flautas sagradas, seguidos pela descricao dos repertorios musicais Desana e Baniwa , alguns deles aparecem nas “Casas de Transformacao” –portais para as dimensoes espirituais da origem.

Este artigo discute as conexões entre a mitologia e a música dos grupos indígenas Guahari Diputiro Porã e Hohodene, na região do Alto Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brasil. O sib Desana Guahari Diputiro Porã originalmente habitava o Rio Papuri, um braço do Rio Uaupés, na região do Alto Rio Negro. Atualmente algumas pessoas do sib vivem em Iauaretê. As frátrias Baniwa, denominadas Hohodene eWalipere-dakenai vivem no Rio Içana, um tributário do Rio Aiari. A mitologia e os repertórios musicais são compartilhados pelos grupos da região em diferentes versões. A pesquisa se baseou em diálogos com o bayá, especialista em cantos e mitos, em São Gabriel da Cachoeira e em Iauaretê. A pesquisa também se baseou em uma longa vivência com os pajés (xamãs) do rio Aiari. Através de entrevistas, gravações e filmagens das sessões, e com mais de três décadas de aprendizado sobre as tradições Hohodene, são mostradas as conexões fundamentais entre identidade coletiva, os instrumentos sagrados, a origem mitológica dos clãs, o processo de dinâmica da criação e transmissão da identidade através da música por gerações, e o processo de pesquisa etnomusicológica colaborativa estabelecido entre as comunidades indígenas, as instituições de pesquisa e ONGs. Este trabalho também apresenta aspectos da origem humana através da performance musical e do rito. Primeiramente serão apresentados os mitos de criação e das flautas sagradas, seguidos pela descrição dos repertórios musicaisDesana e Baniwa, alguns deles aparecem nas “Casas de Transformação” –portais para as dimensões espirituais da origem.