Book description
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache
people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of
places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and
morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with
place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches
on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean
to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather
carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses
of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but
also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first
sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist,
explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of
people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than thirty years,
Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now
he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names--where
they come from and what they mean to Apaches.
"This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language
in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith
Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and
indivisible nature of words and place. And this is a universal
equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all
concepts; it may be the oldest of all words."--N. Scott Momaday
"In Wisdom Sits in Places Keith Basso lifts a veil on the
most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the
world. In so doing he invests his scholarship with that rarest of
scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration. Through his
clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their
land, and when we look away, we see our own world
afresh."--William deBuys
"A very exciting book--authoritative, fully informed, extremely
thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read. Guiding us
vividly among the landscapes and related story-tellings of the Western
Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of language
in the complex but compelling theme of a people's attachment to place.
An important book by an eminent scholar."--Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
