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When the earth was new memory, materiality, and Numic ritual Alex K. Ruuska
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Ruuska, Alex K., 1969- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Numic Indians--Folklore.
- Numic Indians.
- Numic mythology.
- Oral tradition--Great Basin.
- Oral tradition.
- Oral tradition--Colorado Plateau.
- Collective memory--Great Basin.
- Collective memory.
- Collective memory--Colorado Plateau.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource
- Place of Publication:
- Salt Lake City The University of Utah Press [2025]
- Summary:
- "Explores the value of oral traditions and challenges entrenched beliefs about ethnogenesis in the Great Basin In When the Earth Was New, Alex K. Ruuska explores riveting multigenerational memories of Numic-speaking communities that extend back, potentially, to the late Pleistocene. These diverse oral traditions describe geological, climatic, and ecological events that occurred over thousands of years and were passed down across many generations. Through the examination of place-based memories and the architecture of Numic knowledge, Ruuska demonstrates convergences of oral traditions, ethnography, ethnohistory, archaeology, and geology. When the Earth Was New critically compares and considers multiple forms of knowledge that contribute to overlapping as well as disparate understandings of both recent and distant pasts in the regions of California, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau. It works at balancing key themes in these regions’ histories within a more holistic framework, exploring ancient and modern strands of knowledge with the assistance of twenty-four Tribes and Consolidated Organizations"-- JSTOR
- Contents:
- Babies and bathwater
- We have always been here
- Grandma said
- No ritual? No way!
- Raven cracks the ice
- Old woman of the sea and the giant fish
- Giants and waterbabies
- Earth birth
- Vagina dentatum and serpent stories
- Wake ’em up, wake ’em up!
- We are still here
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed April 15, 2026)
- Other Format:
- Print version Ruuska, Alex K., 1969- When the earth was new
- ISBN:
- 1647692350
- 9781647692353
- OCLC:
- 1566898543
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