Word: shamanism
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There is an unavoidable air of patronage in this, as there is in even a good documentary film about Eskimo customs or shaman cultists of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Miss Dawkins is clearly a more highly civilized woman than the people she writes about. However, she bridges the distance between herself and her creatures with pity and a decently reined imagination. Mere realism would have made them caricatures, or the gothic grotesques popular with the school-of-the-South. Even her first story, which begins with that old stock bit of scenery, the scrubbed cabin porch, convinces in the end that...
Contrary to the judgment that would be given by most U.S. physicians, K. was not "mad" in the opinion of his fellows. He became one of the most respected members of his community-a leader in the practice of medicine. For K. is a shaman among the Yakut, a primitive tribe of fishermen and reindeer hunters in the arctic wastes of eastern Siberia. Moral drawn by State of Mind: one man's madness in one society is another's greatness in a different culture...
After a mild demonstration in Mr. Mittell's favor quieted down, the band really gave cause for cheering by playing Mr. Finnegan's "Variations On A Well-Known Theme." The theme was "Marching to Pretoria" and was played as Sousa might have, then in the style of Walter Shaman's "Dragnet" theme, and again after the manner of Spike Jones. Finally, the band imitated the Katzenjammer Kids by singing the song in Dutch. It was a very successful number...
...very different from calling in a witch-doctor to primeval hut," he says. "The words and the rites . . . have become more specialized, as has the method of payment. The occasion, however, has not altered at all and for that matter the obstetrician has not much more idea than the shaman why that particular child should try to be born sideways...
...from Port-au-Prince in 90 minutes. The others motored the same distance in nine hours. At the capitol they were wined and dined by President Horacio Vasquez. Later Daughter Alicia went bathing, kicked a sea porcupine which retaliated with a dozen barbs to the foot. A native Indian shaman extracted most of them with the aid of a burning coconut shell and hot candle grease...