Adult Reading Level

THE SACRED: WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE, SOURCES OF LIFE, Anna Lee Walters, Peggy Beck, Nia Francisco, (look up current publisher, ISBN). 250 pages, oversize paperback, $19.95. Available from The Mail Order Book Catalog, 800-695-2241

Readings (with some explanatory materials) compiled in 1977 as a Native American Studies text (it was one of the very few to exist then), by 3 Native women from different tribal-cultural heritages. The historical excerpts and explanatory material comprise a story of the meanings, roles, and functions of sacred traditional practices and observations in Native lives of the pre-contact past. Theough there are now quite a few books on this subject, they tend to be singl-tribe or single-culture-area. These women were concerned to show the sacred center's commonalities in culture and religion -- all tribes had (have) different practices, but there is a saacred center that unites them, a common world-view quite different from anything in the Western religious traditions, as the editors show mostly by juxtapositions. Though it was compiled and puboished more than 20 years ago, it is still useful, and one NA Studies prof cites it as an essential, or top-10 book he'd need teaching a NA studies intro course. Reviewed by Paula Giese

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