Customer Reviews

Hamatsa

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A good book, I've just recently read it for a class I'm taking in religious anthropology at the University of Ottawa. The book gives a good account of the historical European aproach to cannibalism on the West Coast. It is primarily concerned with the findings of ethnographer Franz Boas and it seeks to refute some of the claims made by Arens and his theories on the man-eating myth. The book details the Hamatsa ceremony and talks about the stigma surrounding cannibalism. The book is not an ethnography, but is more of a critical review of other ethnographic and historical accounts. At the end of the book, McDowell writes of how the ideas of the Hamatsa ceremony can serve our Western culture.