Keith Bassos Wisdom Sits in Places Essay -- American History Western

Keith Bassos Wisdom Sits in PlacesThere is a deep relationship between the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two be so healthy that it is embedded in their culture and hi tosh. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places sp submit out on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, peculiar(prenominal)ally concentrating on Place-names. When Basso first began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to learn the names, because they held a superfluous meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990 54) Place-names are special names given to a special locality where an event took place that was significant in history and of the essence(p) in shaping morals and beliefs. Through the use of place-names, the environment became a teaching tool for Apache people. Red Lake, Minnesota is an Ojibwa place-name. The area dates back 9000 yeas agone when the Stone Age peoples first inhabited the region that is now cognise as northwestern Ontario. These aboriginals were indigenous people familiar with the properties of the surrounding plants and kooky wildcats. They lived along the waterways and treated their environment with respect and celebrated its bounties through their spirituality. (Web come in 1) According to Ojibwa legend, thousands of years ago, two hunters came across a very self-aggrandizing moose standing beside a glorious clear blue lake. The Hunters thought process the moose was an evil spirit named Matchee Manitou and they tried to kill it. One of the hunters triggerman the animal with an arrow just wounding it. The grand and majestic animal escaped by diving into the water and disappearing forever. A oversize pool of blood colored the water red, masking the once beautiful blue lake. A creature so huge was never to be seen again. The hunters named the lake Misq ue Sakigon meaning Color of Blood Lake. Years later it became kn experience as Red Lake. (Web Site 1)When I heard this story, 12 years ago, it came from the sass of my fathers good friend, an Ojibwa man, named Henry Meekis. I still find everyone sitting in front of him while he told the story. His passion for the story permeated the room and we were all captivated by it.The importance of place-name study lies in the light it sheds on the cultural... ...lace-names can be seen in the following excerpt given by an Apache named BensonLewis. I think of the mountain called White Rocks duplicity Above In a Compact Cluster as it were my own grandmother. I recall stories of how it once was at that mountain. The stories told to me were like arrows. Elsewhere, hearing that mountains name, I see it. Its name is like a picture. Stories go to work on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories m ake you replace yourself. (38)When I read Wisdom Sits in Places I could feel the importance of place-names through the linguistic communication of the Apache peoples stories. Events that took place many years ago in a specific areas reiterate the morals and beliefs the Apache people hold near to them. To say that they are anything but relevant to Apache history and culture would be a mistake.whole kit and boodle CitedBasso, Keith 1999 Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press.Cruikshank, Julie 1990 Getting the Words Right Perspectives on Naming and Places in Athapaskan Oral History. Artic Anthropology 27 52-65. 1. www.red-lake.com/museum