SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Anthropology
Parkhill, Thomas C.
Weaving ourselves into the land: Charles Godfrey Leland,"Indians,"
and the study of Native American religions.
State University of New York, 1997.
ISBN 0-7914-3453-2, $59.50
Parkhill's book is a gem of scholarly argument: disarming in its authorial transparency, deft in its careful moving from the particular to the general, securely grounded in the relevant sources, and lucidly written. On one level, it is a careful historical reconstruction of the Native American provenance and "not-Native" alteration and uses of a single Maliseet story. As Parkhill shows, however, it was amateur folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, a late-19th-century Euramerican, who altered the story and foregrounded it in his well-received The Algonquin Legends of New England (1884). What would otherwise be of rather limited interest achieves much wider significance in a second level of the book. Leland was concerned to help Euramericans recover an affinity for nature through a sense of belonging to the land; recovering and, in the process, altering Abenaki and Micmac stories served these romantic ends. Similarly, argues Parkhill, amateur and professional not-Native students of Native American religions today are concerned to "weave ourselves into the land" through "the timeless, tradition-respecting 'Indian' who has a deep abiding relationship to Mother Earth." Even positive stereotyping damages, because it denies Native particularities and historical change. Parkhill challenges students of Native American religions to be more honest about their own religious needs and not to mask them under "our cloak of objectivity." Highly recommended. All levels.
D. F. Anderson
Northwestern College (IA)