Customer Reviews

Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an anthropologist trained in Alaska, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand something more of what they see in Alaska than they can get from a tour guide. It will enhance your sensitivity to the power and mystery of Alaska and you'll see more than you would have if you hadn't read it.

I really enjoyed Nelson's book and found it helpful in my research on the Koyukon people. This is ed in specifics. Nelson presents a sensitive and unbiased ethnography that is well written and enjoyable to read.

Nelson's work is so absolutely excellent. His sentence and paragraph structure are so easy to flow with that I think he could make just about anything interesting. Often anthropologies are dry or are just this side of being believable....as is the case in some books about adventures among far-flung populations. Nelson is so thorough in his describing of myth, language and native understandings which engage the reader's imagination. He's an incredible writer-just as good as those fiction writers who are touted as being great artists in the New York Times Book Review that comes out with the Sunday edition. His writings are well grounded and there is nothing New Age or simplistic in his portrayals of the natural world or indigenous peoples in this case. I find his realism refreshingly accurate and precise when alot of what appears on his same subjects are vague emotional tomes that can be finished in an afternoon and promptly forgotten. If his name appears as author on any written work, read it!!

A fresh direction for anthropological study that is from the "inside." The author lives "among" the people and learns from them, taking pains to distinguish the influence of "western" cultural values. The relationship between this "outsider" and the people who recieve him among them should be the model for all such explorations.

An intriguing account of the boreal forest ecosystem on the Koyukuk River in Alaska and the Native people living there. Although it is an anthropological study, it is far from a dry read. Nelson's writing successfully evokes the mystery of this harsh environment while describing the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Koyukon people. Nelson provides a window on a way of life that unfortunately seems so alien today -- one that incorporates reverence for all of nature in almost every detail of daily life. I couldn't help but envy these people and their way of life, and it caused me to reflect on how different our world would be if we had adopted indigenous values rather than trying to exterminate them. I wish, however, that Nelson would have elucidated on his passing references to how (when he was living among them in the 1970s) the traditional way of life was becoming increasingly ignored by the younger generation. I hope those traditions have survived; I suspect they have, as the raven continues to call in those woods.