Hardcover in Dust jacket, jacket is worn 223 pp. index, photos

Indians of the Southern Plains

Powers, William K.

G.P. Putnams' Sons

Indians of the Northern Plains, (American Indian life series)

Capricorn Books

This study seeks to explain how one group of Native Americans, the Oglala Sioux, has preserved its social and cultural identity despite formidable attempts by the U.S. government to eliminate tribal societies. Treating continuity and change as two aspects of the same phenomenon, it focuses on the nature of the uniquely Oglala values that persist, their modes of cultural expression, and the processes by which they are replicated.

Oglala Religion

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University Of Nebraska Press

A profoundly spiritual book, Yuwipi describes a present-day Oglala Sioux healing ritual that is performed for a wide range of personal crises. The vivid narrative centers on the experience of a hypothetical father and son in need of spiritual and physical assistance. 
The author combines the Yuwipi ceremony with two ancient Sioux rituals often performed in conjunction with it, the vision quest and the sweat lodge. Wayne Runs Again, suffering from alcoholism and worried about his father’s health, seeks out a shaman who, while bound in darkness, calls on supernatural beings to free him and to communicate. While the young man undergoes purification in a sweat lodge and waits on a hill for a vision, the community prays for him and his father. The ceremony serves not only to cure the sick but also to reaffirm the continuity of Oglala society.

Yuwipi: Vision and Experience in Oglala Ritual

History

Americas

This study seeks to explain how one group of Native Americans, the Oglala Sioux, has preserved its social and cultural identity despite formidable attempts by the U.S. government to eliminate tribal societies. Treating continuity and change as two aspects of the same phenomenon, it focuses on the nature of the uniquely Oglala values that persist, their modes of cultural expression, and the processes by which they are replicated.

Oglala Religion (Religion and Spirituality)

Bison Books

(from inside dust jacket flap)  SACRED LANGUAGE The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota  by William Powers   Anthropologists, linguists, ethnomusicologists, and other scholars of the American Indian will welcome this study of the Pine Ridge Lakota people and their religion.  Of prime importance in this volume are the author's translations and exegeses of Lakota sacred song texts. Powers, one of the rare linguists who i8s fluent in the language he discusses, brings a high level of scholarship to both description and analysis. In readable fashion he traces the birth of sacred language to philosophical discourse among medicine men, converse between them and their followers, and prayers to the supernatural.   Although classified as "ghost," some Lakota supernatural make their presence known within ritual context through sensory appeal, being seen or heard in the Yuwipi curing ritual and the Vision Quest or detected in the aroma of sage in the Sweat Lodge. The pantheon they represent is the subject of Lakota creation myths.   However esoteric and mysterious it may be, sacred language is an efficacious instrument for the people. It is not, as Powers points out, archaic but living and contemporaneous, vulnerable to a wide array of influences. Powers discusses these influences, including Christianity. He also considers the special field of sacred numbers and numerical systems as a means of classifying, the social universe for the Lakota. In addition he provides new insights into the writings of James R. Walker, the Pine Ridge physician of the early 1900's who studied Lakota religion.

Sacred language: The nature of supernatural discourse in Lakota (The Civilization of the American Indian series)

University of Oklahoma Press

For anthropologist William K Powers, the study of humanity demands that one live up to the "mandates of a vision." Theories, says the author, are like visions and "may be continually discarded and replaced" with new theories, each one contingent in some way upon the last. This collection of essays includes seven chapters on widely varying aspects of American Indian culture. Powers's observations are connected by a thread of structuralism that elucidates philosophical functionalism, sociobiology, and ethnomusicology. Even more strongly binding the pieces together is Powers's debt to Claude Levi-Strauss. The book is dedicated to the great anthropologist, whom Powers calls "bold and speculative, scientific and philosophical, theoretical and empirical."

Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture (Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

This is a book of the supernatural environment the American Indians lived under. The content describes the methods they used to lead their life.

Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota (Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

The Indian powwow, with its colorful war dance, is among the most vital aspects of American Indian culture.  William Powers has witnessed both the traditions and trends in Plains Indian music and dance over the past thirty years, and here encapsulates his long career in what may be the first book that deals with Plains Indian musical culture as a unit.    After providing background material on the study of American Indian music, Powers gives a full description of the popular war dance, discusses the powwow as the context in which the war dance appears, and describes associated dances.  While observing that a fascination with "pan-Indianism" temporarily misdirected the study of Plains Indian music and dance by focusing too sharply on what many believed was a nationalization of American Indians, Powers notes that individual tribes continue to be concerned with maintaining their ethnic identities through their styles of music and dance.      In the balance of the book, Powers offers essays describing Plains songs available on disc and tape, including notes on the history and culture of tribes and some translations of Lakota songs.  A concluding essay offers some observations of why Plains Indian music and dance have received the interest they have and why they will continue to symbolize a burgeoning contemporary American Indian culture--not only on the Plains, but in every corner of the world where American Indians are respected, admired, and imitated.

War Dance: Plains Indian Musical Performance

Music

University of Arizona Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Powers, William K.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Powers, William K.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Powers, William K.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Indians of the Southern Plains

Indians of the Northern Plains, (American Indian life series)

Oglala Religion

Yuwipi: Vision and Experience in Oglala Ritual

Oglala Religion (Religion and Spirituality)

Yuwipi: Vision and Experience in Oglala Ritual

Sacred language: The nature of supernatural discourse in Lakota (The Civilization of the American Indian series)

Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture (Civilization of the American Indian Series)

Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota (Civilization of the American Indian Series)

War Dance: Plains Indian Musical Performance