Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians

Description

Author: Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1912-1994)

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Pub Date: 1974 (Second printing)

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears.  Upper front cover corner has several bends, wrinkling.  Two previous owners.  First previous owner’s name in ink on upper corner title page (crossed out).  Second previous owner’s name and mark on upper corner title page, near spine head.  Upper rear cover corner has an approx. 6″ bend.   Some edge and corner wear.

Notes: Originally published in Spanish in 1969.  The Desana, a tribe of the northwest Amazon, are the focus of this volume–their religion (creation myth), gods and demons, signs and symbols (including dreams), man and tribe’s relationship with the supernatural–as informed by an acculturated member of the tribe.  Probably best as an anthropology text, but it doesn’t read like it.  Here’s the first part of a speech Reichel-Dolmatoff gave in 1987, that definitely applies to this volume.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardo_Reichel-Dolmatoff  )

“Today I must acknowledge that since the beginning of the 1940s, it has been for me a real privilege to live with, and also try to understand in depth, diverse indigenous groups. I noted among them particular mental structures and value systems that seemed to be beyond any of the typologies and categories held then by Anthropology. I did not find the ‘noble savage’ nor the so-called ‘primitive’. I did not find the so-called degenerate or brutish Indian nor even less the inferior beings as were generally described by the rulers, missionaries, historians, politicians and writers. What I did find was a world with a philosophy so coherent, with morals so high, with social and political organizations of great complexity, and with sound environmental management based on well-founded knowledge. In effect, I saw that the indigenous cultures offered unsuspected options that offered strategies of cultural development that simply we should not ignore because they contain valid solutions and are applicable to a variety of human problems. All of this more and more made my admiration grow for the dignity, the intelligence and the wisdom of these aborigines, who not least have developed wondrous dynamics and forms of resistance thanks to which so-called ‘civilization’ has not been able to exterminate them.”