394 pages
14 photographs, 1 table, index
Working collaboratively with Yoeme communities, Shorter has produced a scrupulous investigation that challenges received wisdom from both anthropological and New Age perspectives, demonstrates how Yoeme performances provide a counterdiscourse to earlier understandings of colonialism and conquest, and updates our knowledge of contemporary Yoeme society. Shorter’s vivid descriptions and penetrating analyses vividly show how today’s Yoeme peoples navigate the tribulations and opportunities of the twenty-first century.
"We Will Dance Our Truth: Yaqui History in Yoeme Performances is an engagingly written and important book. . . . I enthusiastically recommend this book for those concerned with colonialism and conversion, ritual performances, indigenous epistemologies, religious studies, and Native American verbal art and performance."—Anthony K. Webster, Journal of American Folklore
“Detailed and nuanced. David Shorter appropriately and impressively tips the balance in favor of the people whose stories he tells as he grapples with their history and how scholars can most effectively be in conversation with those they write about.”—Robert Warrior, author of Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions
Introduction: Talking About Where Yoeme History Begins
Chapter 1. Geography of Yoeme Identities
Ethnographic Dialogue I
Chapter 2. Putting Worlds into Words: The Testamento as Storying Space into Place
Ethnographic Dialogue II
Chapter 3. Listening to the Tree, Hearing History
Ethnographic Dialogue III
Chapter 4. Our History of Nuestros Triunfos
Ethnographic Dialogue IV
Interchapter: Reconsidering “Writing” and the Proof of History
Chapter 5. Hunting for History
Ethnographic Dialogue V
Chapter 6. Yoeme Place Making: Cosmography, Topogeny, and Territory
Ethnographic Dialogue VI
Conclusion: Potam Pueblo Enacted
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography