American Indian Cultural Heroes and Teaching Tales
Evenings with Chasing Deer
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The first section of this books tells the tales of three great figures in American Indian culture: two of flesh and bone and one heroine of spirit. These stories give us hope that in a time of disarray and despair, a culture can be turned around to walk a more wholesome path.
The second section offers yarns from the Lakota that relate the dire consequences in store for those who choose to live a life of self-centered pursuit. In all of them, we're reminded that only a life lived in integrity and service is a life worth living.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following the format of his American Indian Prophecies, Kaltreider--a trained philosopher and clinical psychologist who is of Nanticoke, German and English descent--presents Native American tales and legends as a series of fictionalized conversations between Chasing Deer, a Cheyenne/Lakota elder, and John Lawson, a college-educated white man. In the discussions recounted here, John learns about three American Indian heroes (two real and one spiritual) and listens to a series of humorous folktales, related by Chasing Deer, about Iktomi, a Lakota mischief maker whose escapades illustrate what can go wrong when principles of cooperation are abandoned. Kaltreider's portraits of Dakanahwideh, who founded the Iroquois Confederation, Sweet Medicine, and White Buffalo Calf Maiden, a holy woman who taught sacred traditions are engaging. And he manages to work a great deal of little-acknowledged conventional history into his conversations with Chasing Deer, who emerges as an inspiring ethical thinker.
