9781496232076

9781496230256

"Apart from collective memories of lived experiences, much of the modern world's historical sense comes from written sources stored in the archives of the world, and some scholars in the not-so-distant past have described unlettered civilizations as "peoples without history." In Praise of the Ancestors is a revisionist interpretation of early colonial accounts that reveal incongruities in accepted knowledge about three Native groups. Susan Elizabeth Ramírez reevaluates three case studies of oral traditions using positional inheritance-a system in which names and titles are inherited from one generation by another and thereby contribute to the formation of collective memories and a group identity. Ramírez begins by examining positional inheritance and perpetual kinship among the Kazembes in central Africa from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Next, her analysis moves to the Native groups of the Iroquois Confederation and their practice of using names to memorialize remarkable leaders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, Ramírez surveys naming practices of the Andeans, based on sixteenth-century manuscript sources and later testimonies found in Spanish and Andean archives, questioning colonial narratives by documenting the use of this alternative system of memory perpetuation, which was initially unrecognized by the Spaniards. In the process of reexamining the histories of Native peoples on three continents, Ramírez broaches a wider issue: namely, understanding of the nature of knowledge as fundamental to understanding and evaluating the knowledge itself. "-- Provided by publisher.

"In Praise of the Ancestors is a revisionist interpretation of early colonial accounts and sources that reveal incongruities in accepted knowledge among the Indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, the North American Great Lakes regions, and the Andes"-- Provided by publisher.

Borderlands and Transcultural Studies

Alternative Ways of Remembering and Knowing

"Positional Inheritance" in Africa

The Narration of Ho-De'-No-Sau-Nee (Iroquois) History

The Making of Andean Ancestral Traditions

Reflections on Oral Traditions as History.

Incas > Social life and customs.

Incas > Social life and customs.

Iroquois Indians > Social life and customs.

Lulua (African people) > Social life and customs.

Oral tradition > Case studies.

Onomastics > America > Case studies.

Onomastics > Andes > Case studies.

Onomastics > Africa, Sub-Saharan > Case studies.

Names, Personal > Andean > Case studies.

Names, Personal > Iroquois > Case studies.

Names, Personal > Luba-Lulua > Case studies.