Smith, HarryHarry Smith lecture on Native American cosmos. (July 8, 1990)

Harry Smith describes two Native American ceremonies he witnessed in the early 1940's in the Pacific Northwest. Interspersed with his account of the ceremonies, he discusses tangentially various related topics, including Native American health before the European invasion, Native American sign language, the migration of symbols, misogyny in anthropological accounts of Native American peoples, creation myths, and cosmology.

This item is part of the collection: Naropa Poetics Audio Archives

Author: Smith, Harry
Date: 1990-07-08 00:00:00
Recorded by: Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
Keywords: spirituality and literature; mysticism

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial

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Reviewer: thepalebright - - January 23, 2008
Subject: the magic's in the man not the words

seems about an hour long. the students in audience have good fun with him.

Reviewer: framerAte - - March 6, 2006
Subject: "the sticks, the bird, the four-part thing to pull on"

Tracked this down because of Peter Lamborn Wilson's references to the "strange lectures" given by Smith.

Harry Smith was a student of Paul Radin, who has written several well-received books on Native American myth.

In this talk Smith attempts to recount ceremonies he attended in the 1940's based on his own admittedly cloudy memory and capricious interest: "the ideas are going to be somewhat disjointed..."

He manages a few interesting comments, but the talk is fairly plodding, unfocused, and tangential (and not in any particularly interesting way).