Browsing by Author "Shillibeer, Carol"
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- ItemOpen AccessSweetgrass innovations in native and new age communities(1995) Shillibeer, Carol; Hatt, Doyle G.This thesis is a study of contemporary practices and ritual attitudes in relation to the use of sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) in two research populations: natives from the Northern Plains and "new agers ". Ethnographic observations on usage and ritual are reported; personal experiences and beliefs are recorded in the users' own words. Despite the similarities between neophyte practitioners and long-experienced adepts in both populations, the users' characterizations of the meaning of their actions reveals a systematic difference in "ritual attitude ". Natives' accounts seem to be predicated on "metaphoric" symbolic connections, (their behavior in relation to sweetgrass usage constrained by a sense of tradition). By contrast, new agers' accounts seem to reveal a "metonymic" pattern of relating symbols to one another, and a willingness to syncretize and to innovate personal meanings. This leads to the conclusion that the culturally common "element" of sweetgrass performs significantly different "symbolic work" in native and white contexts.