According to UCLA professor Nabokov (Native American Testimony
), the places that American Indians call sacred may be as wondrous as "cliffs spilling with waterfalls" and as humble as "caves splattered with bat excrement." What makes them important is not postcard-perfect beauty but the beliefs a group has about "what lies within
or beneath
what the eye can see." This excellent volume presents the "biographies" of 16 such places, from Maine to California. Through them, Nabokov surveys a wide range of Native American spiritual practices and reveals how intrusions into Native Americans' land have also constituted assaults upon their religious beliefs. Indeed, many of the assaults continue to this day: after the disruptions caused by war, disease, missionary activity and forced relocation came those of hydroelectric dams, agribusiness, parking lots and extreme sports buffs. Nabokov's deeply informed text is enhanced by first-person accounts of his visits to the locations and by his spirited commentary on the writings of other ethnographers, naturalists, linguists and anthropologists. Sentimental clichés and monolithic views are dismantled along the way. Each of Nabokov's biographies can be savored separately; taken together, they demonstrate both that there is "more to some American places than [meets] the eye" and that Native Americans have known that for a very long time. (Jan.)
