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Reflections on “Stalking with Stories,” from Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache by Keith A. Basso.
Keith A. Basso finds embedded in the the language of the Western Plains' Native Americans a memory code of place tied to stories. Human memory is often organized in associative patters. Different cultures have different depths of association based on their interactions with their environment and their means of producing food, shelter, and clothing. The Inuits, who live in the Arctic have many words for snow; modern technical fields have their own complex jargon; language morphs to reflect the underlying complexity of the daily interaction of the individual with his or her environment. Basso illustrates how the traditional hunter gatherers of North America formed a rich linguistic bond between their culture and the spaces they occupied. What perhaps is most surprising in Basso's telling is the incredible detail and richness of the prescriptive association. His research into the the rich linguistic depths of the Western Apache reveals a form of thought that seems alien to the we...
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