Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory (CLASSICS OF TLINGIT ORAL LITERATURE)
The first book-length publication of recorded Tlingit oratory, presented with facing English translation, annotations, photographs, and elder biographies.
Work Information
Oral tradition is preserved with care and historical depth.
The book presents Tlingit speeches in the original language alongside English translation and detailed annotation. It is both a scholarly record and a tribute to the voices that sustained the tradition.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Univ of Washington Pr
- Published
- 1991-04-01
- Pages
- 606 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 22.96 x 15.44 x 3.89 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780295968506
- ISBN-10
- 0295968508
- Price
- 9195 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Nonfiction/Education/Reference
Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit is the first publication of Tlingit oratory recorded in performance. It features Tlingit texts with facing English translations and detailed annotations; photographs of the orators and the settings in which the speeches were delivered; and biographies of the elders. There are thirty-two speeches by twenty-one Tlingit elders. Most were taped between 1968 and 1988, but two speeches were recorded on wax cylinders by the Harriman Expedition in Sitka in 1899, and are the oldest known sound recordings of Tlingit. The book is of importance both to native and non-native readers alike. For those of Native American heritage it articulates concepts understood and practiced by elders but difficult for them to explain, and often bewildering to younger generations. For people around the world interested in Northwest Coast culture, it offers new insights into a traditional world view and the classics of Tlingit oral literature. Careful attention is given to transcription, translation, and annotation by the collaboration of Nora Marks Dauenhauer, a native speaker of Tlingit and a published poet, with a degree in anthropology, and her husband Richard Dauenhauer, a translator of European poetry and a former poet laureate of Alaska, with a Ph. D. in comparative literature.
Nora Marks Dauenhauer (1927-2017) was a Tlingit author, poet, and scholar. She was a member of the Lukaax̱.ádi (Sockeye Salmon) clan and the Shaka Hít (Canoe Prow House) and Tlingit was her first language. She studied anthropology at Alaska Methodist (now Pacific) University in Anchorage. She authored numerous collections of poetry and prose and served as writer laureate of Alaska from 2012-2014. Richard Dauenhauer (1942-2014) was a poet, linguist, and scholar of Tlingit culture. He earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1975 from the University of Wisconsin, with a dissertation titled Text and Context of Tlingit Oral Tradition . He was a professor of literature at Alaska Methodist University and later of Alaska Native languages and culture at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. From 1981 to 1988, he was the poet laureate of Alaska.
Reviews
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I am quite moved by this book. All the speeches give me pause as I am a Tlingit and what this book is about is a big part of the present Tlingit culture. Again, this book is a part of our Tlingit Literature class. I have the privelege of not just having the authors as the professors of the class but many Tlingit elders who either were present for some of the "potlatches" where the speeches were made or who knew the orators in the book.
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This book is a great part of Tlingit culture, that can be shared with everyone. I'm not of Tlingit lineage, but even I get something out of this book. The stories give the reader a sense of what the Tlingit people cherish. And it also offers the student of Tlingit (which is my area of interest) some interesting reading material.
Related Literary Awards
- American Book Awards Edition 12 (1991) ・Winner・Winner