In this innovative, performative approach to the expressive culture of the Yaqui (Yoeme) peoples of the Sonora and Arizona borderlands, David Delgado Shorter provides an altogether fresh understanding of Yoeme worldviews. Based on extensive field study, Shorter’s interpretation of the community’s ceremonies and oral traditions as forms of “historical inscription” reveals new meanings of their legends of the Talking Tree, their narrative of myth-and-history known as the Testamento, their fabled deer dances, funerary rites, and church processions.

 

Working collaboratively with Yoeme communities, Shorter’s scrupulous investigation challenges received wisdom from both anthropological and New Age perspectives, demonstrates how Yoeme performances provide a counter-discourse to earlier understandings of colonialism and conquest, and updates our knowledge of contemporary Yoeme society. Through Shorter’s vivid descriptions and penetrating analyses we see for ourselves how today’s Yoeme peoples navigate the tribulations and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

David Delgado Shorter is an associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.