Crow Indians

Since its rediscovery in the 1970s, Edward S. Curtis’s project to exhaustively photograph and describe American Indian cultures in the early twentieth century has invited shifting critical assessments. Complicating earlier arguments that it represents a nostalgic and inauthentic drama of a “vanishing” race, in which Indians functioned merely as props, recent scholars seek to recover his sitters’ agency or contemporary artists’ acts of reclamation. This article con- tributes to those efforts, but by exploring the temporal ambiguities inherent in the notion – then common among ethnographic photographers – of “preserving” a people for future viewers. It thus examines a photograph that Curtis contributed in 1913 to the Modern Historic Records Association, a short-lived organization that intended to assemble time capsules and archival vaults for historians in the distant future. Focussing on this single photograph – “The Oath – Apsaroke” (1908) – also allows us to track the way that Curtis’s images could break free from his book project and resonate unpredictably across multiple domains, such as debates over the existence and meaning of Indian oaths.

Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos "[N]ot only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him(Wakan Tanka-the Great Spirit) continually in differing ways."-Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk) A S CONTEMPORARY LIFE BECOMES MORE AND MORE FRAGMENTED AND UNSUSTAINABLE, many individuals are left perplexed and searching for more complete and sustainable models to understand themselves and their place in the world around them. It is the spiritual crisis brought about by a desacralized worldview that began in the modern West with the emergence of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment that has created an existential and ontological void and uprooted the centrality of the sacred in the lives of the human collectivity. Very few would question or challenge the reality of climate change and the perilous situation of the present day, yet it is often overlooked that indigenous communities have in many cases been impacted the hardest by the environmental crisis and have been on the frontline of the struggle to protect the earth, as witnessed most recently by the events at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The First Peoples of the world provide an integral vision as to how human beings can live in balance and harmony within themselves and simultaneously with the world around them. It needs to be remembered that it was not until relatively recently that the religion and shamanic traditions of the First Peoples-with all their diversity-were viewed to be one of the world's religions itself. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed and put into law in 1978, allowed indigenous peoples to freely practice their traditional religion without fear of persecution. The timeless wisdom of the diverse cultures of the world speaks in a singular voice on the nature of the Absolute or Spirit, which is often referred to as the perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis). Joseph Epes Brown, renowned scholar of the Native American Traditions and World Religions, writes: 112 | PARABOLA FALL 2017 | 113 Book Reviews A sacred service, an open esoteric secretthe Act of Consecration of Man.

Riferendosi alle pratiche rituali dei Crow connesse con il culto del Tabacco, Lowie, l'etnologo cui dobbiamo la maggior parte dei documenti su questo popolo, dichiara: "In short the Tobacco ceremony resembles not a unified plot but rather a chain of casually coupled episodes from the tribal repertory" (Lowie 1935: 296). Il culto del Tabacco (ma Lowie si guarda dal definirlo "culto" o "rito") sarebbe solo una somma disorganica di tratti comuni ad altre cerimonie, messi insieme in modo più o meno arbitrario. In effetti Lowie ha una considerazione simile praticamente di tutte le cerimonie dei Crow, compresa ad esempio la Sun Dance, e questa posizione è coerente con la sua valutazione della religione complessiva di questo popolo, che giudica poco sviluppata, confusa, incoerente. Nonostante l'affetto che indubbiamente provava per i Crow, Lowie non può fare a meno di considerare, sotto l'aspetto religioso, i Crow "carenti" rispetto ad altri popoli delle Pianure, compresi i vicini Hidatsa, un popolo affine da cui i Crow si sono separati nella metà del XVIII secolo e con il quale si considerano imparentati. Questo giudizio di incoerenza e di "carenza" appare assai ingeneroso verso i Crow e deriva, come abbiamo cercato di dimostrare altrove (Menicocci 2009) dal particolare carattere della cultura crow orientata prevalentemente dall'istituto della visione e non da predisposizioni particolari di questo popolo. In particolare, nel caso specifico del culto del Tabacco, pare davvero difficile immaginare che i Crow abbiano semplicemente affastellato a caso temi tratti dalla loro religione in un culto che aveva un valore rilevante nella loro cultura. Lo stesso Lowie riteneva che questo culto fosse centrale per i Crow ed anzi vi attribuisce un carattere distintivo nel fondare la loro cultura rispetto a tutti gli altri popoli, compresi i vicini Hidatsa. Ciascun popolo dell'area aveva un proprio culto distintivo e peculiare e quello dei Crow sarebbe stato proprio il culto del Tabacco.