Contrary (social Role)
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Contrary (social Role)
A Contrary, among the historical Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains, a tribe member who adopted behavior deliberately the opposite of other tribal members. They were a small number of individuals loosely organized into a cult that was devoted to the practice of contrary behavior. The Contraries are related, in part, to the clown organizations of the Plains Indians, as well as to Plains military societies that contained ''reverse warriors''. The Lakota word heyoka, which translates as clown or opposites, serves as a collective title for these institutionalized forms of contrary behavior of the Plains Indians. When Lakota Indians first saw European clowns, they identified them with their own term for clowns, ''heyoka''. History of concept George B. Grinnell introduced the designation Contraries based on his visits to the Cheyenne around 1898. Written accounts of the ''heyoka'' (i.e., the Contraries and clowns of the Lakota and Santee) were published even earlier. The cultura ...
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Plains Indians
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere. The Plains tribes are usually divided into two broad classifications which overlap to some degree. The first group became a fully nomadic horse culture during the 18th and 19th centuries, following the vast herds of American bison, although some tribes occasionally engaged in ag ...
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Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. It is the southern and main part of the Interior Plains, which also include the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. The term Western Plains is used to describe the ecoregion of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains. The Great Plains lies across both Central United States and Western Canada, encompassing: * The entirety of the U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota; * Parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming; * The southern portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. ...
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Clown Society
Clown society is a term used in anthropology and sociology for an organization of comedic entertainers (Heyoka or "clowns") who have a formalized role in a culture or society. Description and function Sometimes clown societies have a sacred role, to represent a trickster character in religious ceremonies. Other times the purpose served by members of a clown society is only to parody excessive seriousness, or to deflate pomposity. In the sense of how clowns function in their culture: * A clown shows what is wrong with the ordinary way of doing things. * A clown shows how to do ordinary things the "wrong way". By doing ordinary things "the wrong way" the clown reveals what would otherwise be perceived as the serious or true state of things in a different fashion. Members of a clown society may dress in a special costume reserved for clowns, which is often a ridiculously extreme or improper form of normal dress. Some members paint their body with horizontal black and white stripes, w ...
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Heyoka
The heyoka (, also spelled "haokah," "heyokha") is a kind of sacred clown in the culture of the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota people) of the Great Plains of North America. The heyoka is a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them. Only those having visions of the thunder beings of the west, the , and who are recognized as such by the community, can take on the ceremonial role of the heyoka. The Lakota medicine man, Black Elk, described himself as a ''heyoka'', saying he had been visited as a child by the thunder beings. Social role The is thought of as being in charge for above and below, or are more in charge for the dead, instead of the living. This manifests by their doing not always everything like the others. For example, if food is scarce, a may sit around and complain about how full he is; during a baking hot heat wave, a might shiver with cold and put on gloves and cover himself with a thick blanket. ...
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George Bird Grinnell
George Bird Grinnell (September 20, 1849 – April 11, 1938) was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell in Glacier National Park in Montana is named after Grinnell. Exploration and conservation Grinnell had extensive contact with the terrain, animals and Native Americans of the northern plains, starting with being part of the last great hunt of the Pawnee in 1872. He spent many years studying the natural history of the region. As a graduate student, he accompanied Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s 1874 Black Hills expedition as a naturalist. He declined a similar appointm ...
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Cheyenne
The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the Tsétsêhéstâhese (also spelled Tsitsistas, The term for the Cheyenne homeland is ''Tsiihistano''. Language The Cheyenne of Montana and Oklahoma speak the Cheyenne language, known as ''Tsêhésenêstsestôtse'' (common spelling: Tsisinstsistots). Approximately 800 people speak Cheyenne in Oklahoma. There are only a handful of vocabulary differences between the two locations. The Cheyenne alphabet contains 14 letters. Th ...
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Julian Steward
Julian Haynes Steward (January 31, 1902 – February 6, 1972) was an American anthropologist known best for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change. Early life and education Steward was born in Washington, D.C., where he lived on Monroe Street, NW, and later, Macomb Street in Cleveland Park. At age 16, Steward left an unhappy childhood in Washington, D.C. to attend boarding school in Deep Springs Valley, California, in the Great Basin. Steward's experience at the newly established Deep Springs Preparatory School (which later became Deep Springs College), high in the White Mountains had a significant influence on his academic and career interests. Steward’s “direct engagement” with the land (specifically, subsistence through irrigation and ranching) and the Northern Paiute Amerindians that lived there became a “catalyst” for his theory and method of cultural ecology. (Kerns 1999; Murphy 1977) ...
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Michigan Academy Of Science, Arts And Letters
The Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters (MASAL) is a regional professional organization of scholars. Its main activity is the annual meeting (usually March), its quarterly journal of papers (the ''Michigan Academician''), and research news from Michigan universities and colleges. It also awards annually the Kapp Prize for outstanding undergraduate research presented at its annual meeting. Most of the MASAL's members are faculty or graduate students at universities or colleges in Michigan. The remainder are independent scholars, researchers in business or government, or residing in other states. The Academy is hosted by Alma College. The ''Michigan Academician'' is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal. One issue a year is devoted to abstracts of papers presented at the annual meeting. MASAL is affiliated with the National Association of the Academies of Science of the American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for th ...
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Verne Ray
Verne Frederick Ray, (1905 – September 28, 2003) was anthropology professor at the University of Washington, with a B.A. and M.A. in anthropology from Washington and a Ph.D. (in 1937) from Yale. Ray was one of the first anthropologists at UW, was head of the Department of Anthropology and associate dean of the graduate school. He is known best for assisting Northwest tribes with tribal land-claim settlements and is viewed as pioneer in the field of ethnohistory. The Cowlitz tribe, which he helped gain federal recognition, made him an honorary member in 2000."OBITUARIES - Verne F. Ray (1905-2003)" by William R Seaburg ''American anthropologist''. 107, no. 1, (2005): 180 Some of his papers are held at Gonzaga University. He was married to fellow anthropologist and author Dorothy Jean Ray. Bibliography He is the author or editor of 52 books dealing with the anthropology of the American Indians of the Northwest. In particular, his work with the Interior Salish Tribes of Wa ...
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John Plant (ethnologist)
John Plant (born 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American ethnologist, biologist and expert on the culture of the Plains Indians. Academic career Plant studied anthropology at Windham College in Putney (Vermont, USA), graduating with the B.A. degree (1976), and biology at the Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven (Connecticut, USA), with the B.S. degree (1978). He continued the study of biology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität im Breisgau (Germany), acquiring the Diplom degree (1985). Afterwards, Plant began an investigation on the contraries and clowns of the Plains Indians. With his doctoral thesis on this topic he earned the Dr. phil. (1994) under the supervision of Prof. Ulrich Köhler and Dr. Lothar Käser at the Institut für Völkerkunde of the Universität Freiburg (Germany). Since 1998, Plant has been a science associate of the Department of Evolutionary Biology (Faculty of Life Sciences, Center of Zoology) at the University of Vienna (Austria) ...
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Religious Occupations Of The Indigenous Peoples Of North America
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith,Tillich, P. (1957) ''Dynamics of faith''. Harper Perennial; (p. 1). a supernatural being or supernatural beings or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life". Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture ...
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