Clackamas Chinook Performance Art : Verse Form Interpretations

Victoria Howard

ISBN 10: 1496230418 / ISBN 13: 9781496230416

Published by University Of Nebraska Press Mär 2022, 2022

About this Item

Neuware - Edited by Catharine Mason, Clackamas Chinook Performance Art pairs performances with biographical, family, and historical content that reflects Victoria Howard's ancestry, personal and social life, education, and worldview.

Seller Inventory # 9781496230416

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Clackamas Chinook Performance Art : Verse Form Interpretations
• Publisher: University Of Nebraska Press Mär 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1496230418
• ISBN 13: 9781496230416
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 18D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 18 millimeters depth
• Weight: 420 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Victoria Howard was born around 1865, a little more than ten years after the founding of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon. Howardʼs maternal grandmother, Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, was a successful and valued Clackamas shaman at Grand Ronde, and her maternal grandfather, Quiaquaty, was an elite Molalla chief. In the summer of 1929 linguist Melville Jacobs, student of Franz Boas, requested to record Clackamas Chinook oral traditions with Howard, which she enthusiastically agreed to do. The result is an intricate and lively corpus of linguistic and ethnographic material, as well as rich performances of Clackamas literary heritage, as dictated by Howard and meticulously transcribed by Jacobs in his field notebooks. Ethnographical descriptions attest to the traditional lifestyle and environment in which Howard grew up, while fine details of cultural and historical events reveal the great consideration and devotion with which she recalled her past and that of her people.

Catharine Mason has edited twenty-five of Howard’s spoken-word performances into verse form entextualizations, along with the annotations provided by Jacobs in his publications of Howard’s corpus in the late 1950s. Mason pairs performances with biographical, family, and historical content that reflects Howardʼs ancestry, personal and social life, education, and worldview. Mason’s study reveals strong evidence of how the artist contemplated and internalized the complex meanings and everyday lessons of her literary heritage. 

About the Author

Catharine Mason is an associate professor of ethnographic linguistics and English studies at Université de Caen Normandie, Caen, France.