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The Flesh and the Word: Stories and Other Gifts of the Animals in Chipewyan Cosmology
Author(s) -
Smith David M.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/anhu.2002.27.1.60
Subject(s) - generosity , flesh , power (physics) , assertion , sociology , criticism , ethnography , aesthetics , subject (documents) , literature , philosophy , anthropology , art , theology , chemistry , physics , food science , quantum mechanics , library science , computer science , programming language
Although subject to criticism, scholars generally acknowledge the validity of Marcel Mauss's assertion that the gift exchange is central to the origins of human society. However, commentary overlooks the fact that for a good many North American Indians, and for others known in the ethnographic record, society involves other‐than human persons—especially animal persons. Focusing on the gift of stories, this article argues that for the Northern Athapaskan‐speaking Chipewyan, animals are not just a part of society; they provide the fundamental gifts upon which life is based. The most portentous example of their generosity—sacrificially presenting themselves to be killed by hunters—is paradigmatic for the selflessness in which humans should give to other humans. Furthermore, it is the circulation of power (inkonze) found in the animals'flesh, along with the inkonze embedded in such things as the words and actions of curers and storytellers—who are inspired by dreams that are given as gifts from the animals—that makes human life possible. Not only society, but reality itself is, in important measure, based upon the giving, receiving, and the returning of gifts of power