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Cariban Indians --- Island Carib Indians --- Calinago Indians --- Calino Indians --- Callinago Indians --- Kalinago Indians --- Indians of the West Indies --- Indians of South America --- History --- Antilles, Lesser --- Caribbees --- Lesser Antilles --- West Indies --- History.

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To Weave and Sing is the first in-depth analysis of the rich spiritual and artistic traditions of the Carib-speaking Yekuana Indians of Venezuela, who live in the dense rain forest of the upper Orinoco. Within their homeland of Ihuruna, the Yekuana have succeeded in maintaining the integrity and unity of their culture, resisting the devastating effects of acculturation that have befallen so many neighboring groups. Yet their success must be attributed to more than natural barriers of rapids and waterfalls, to more than lack of "contact" with our "modern" world. The ethnographic history recounted here includes not only the Spanish discovery of the Yekuana but detailed indigenous accounts of the entire history of Yekuana contact with Western culture, revealing an adaptive technique of mythopoesis by which the symbols of a new and hostile European ideology have been consistently defused through their incorporation into traditional indigenous structures.The author's initial point of departure is the Watunna, the Yekuana creation epic, but he finds his principal entrance into this mythic world through basketry, focusing on the eleborate kinetic designs of the round waja baskets and the stories told about them. Guss argues that the problem of understanding Yekuana basketry is the problem of understanding all traditional art forms within a tribal context, and critiques the cultural assumptions inherent in our systems of classification. He demonstrates that the symbols woven into the baskets function not in isolation but collectively, as a powerful system cutting across the entire culture.To Weave and Sing addresses all Yekuana material culture and the greater reality it both incorporates and masks, discerning a unifying configuration of symbols in chapters on architectural forms, the geography of the body, and the use of herbs, face paints, and chants. A narrow view of slash-and-burn gardens as places of mere subsistence is challenged by Guss's portrait of these exclusively female spaces as systematic inversions of the male world, "the sacred turned on its head." Throughout, a wealth of narrative and ritual materials provides us with the closest approximation we have to a native exegesis of these phenomena. What we are offered here is a new Poetics of Culture, ethnography not as a static given but as a series of shifting fields, wherein culture (and our image of it) is constantly recreated in all of its parts, by all of its members.

Indian baskets --- Yecuana Indians --- Yecuana baskets. --- Baskets, Yecuana --- Baskets --- Cunuana Indians --- Dekuhana Indians --- Ihuruhana Indians --- Kunuhana Indians --- Maiongking Indians --- Maiongong Indians --- Makiritare Indians --- Maquiritare Indians --- Pawana Indians --- Soto Indians --- Yacuana Indians --- Yekuana Indians --- Yekuhana Indians --- Indians of South America --- Baskets, Indian --- Indians --- Religion. --- Basket making --- anthropology. --- basketry. --- carib. --- chants. --- creation myth. --- epic. --- ethnography. --- face paint. --- folk belief. --- folk tales. --- folklore. --- gardens. --- gender roles. --- gender. --- handicrafts. --- herbs. --- ihuruna. --- indian. --- indigenous culture. --- indigenous peoples. --- latin america. --- material culture. --- mythic world. --- mythology. --- mythopoetic. --- native peoples. --- nonfiction. --- orinoco. --- rainforest. --- religion. --- ritual. --- sacred. --- social science. --- sociology. --- south america. --- spain. --- spirituality. --- symbolism. --- tradition. --- traditional art. --- tribes. --- upper orinoco. --- venezuela. --- waja baskets. --- watunna. --- yekuana.

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In and Out of Suriname: Language, Mobility and Identity offers a unique multidisciplinary perspective on a multilingual society in the Caribbean and Guianan sphere. Breaking away from the view of bounded ethnicity, the authors address central theoretical issues of multilingual and multicultural societies including ethnicity as a social distinction, identity as the shifting construction of the self and others, and the role of language therein. They discuss the impact of contact and mobilities on language maintenance, expansion and change. Language, mobility and identity in Suriname are observed through the lens of the actors themselves, from the ever-mobile Amerindians and Maroons on the periphery of land and society through expanding urban societies enhanced by recent migration from Haiti, Brazil and China.

Creole dialects --- Languages in contact --- Linguistic change --- Sociolinguistics --- Suriname --- Languages. --- Language and languages --- Language and society --- Society and language --- Sociology of language --- Change, Linguistic --- Language change --- Creole languages --- Creolized languages --- Social aspects --- Sociological aspects --- Language and culture --- Linguistics --- Sociology --- Integrational linguistics (Oxford school) --- Historical linguistics --- Areal linguistics --- Languages, Mixed --- Pidgin languages --- Creole dialects. --- Language and languages. --- Languages in contact. --- Linguistic change. --- Sociolinguistics. --- Suriname. --- Foreign languages --- Languages --- Anthropology --- Communication --- Ethnology --- Information theory --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Philology --- Dutch Guiana --- Nederlandisch Guyana --- Nederlandsch Guyana --- Netherland Guiana --- Netherlands Guiana --- Orandaryō Giana --- Ranryō Giana --- Republic of Suriname --- Republiek Suriname --- Surinaam --- Surinam --- Sūrīnāma --- Surinamu --- surinam --- Carib language --- Chinese language --- Dutch language --- Ethnic group --- French Guiana --- Netherlands --- Paramaribo --- Sranan Tongo