A Time Before Deception: Truth in Communication, Culture, and Ethics

Attempts to show the rules, rituals and ethics of authentic indigenous communication before the arrival of white men in America

Rejecting the assumption that literate cultures are superior to preliterate ones, Cooper explores how native peoples?Amerindian, Australian, Hawaiian, African, etc.?utilize a multitude of precise, stylized, disciplined communication forms ranging from chant, song, dance and memorized myths to sign language, facial and body painting and silent communion. In many native societies, the primary form of communication, he maintains, is with the Great Spirit, intermediary to a universe commingling animals, plants, spirits, weather patterns and humans in an organic whole. Cooper, a communication professor at Emerson College in Boston, incorporates his anthropological fieldwork with the peaceful, egalitarian Shushwap people of British Columbia and with the enduring, prayerful Dine Navajo of northeastern Arizona. He finds that among indigenous peoples generally, customs and ethical practices regulate social interactions, and further, that a universal set of shared moral teachings cuts across tribes and continents. A self-described WASP from Tennessee, Cooper has penetrated deeply into native modes of communication and ethics, bringing back compelling moral perspectives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Indigenous Americans refer to the era before white colonization as "the time before lying," the time before men spoke with "forked tongues." Cooper, a self-described Harvard-educated WASP from Tennessee, strives to reveal the "neglected prong in the fork of communication" by showing us the rules, rituals, and ethics of authentic indigenous communication before the arrival of white men. These include flaming arrows, spells, smoke signals, facial and body painting, tattoos, blanket and feather languages, enchanted perception, and talking drums. To indigenous people, language is an "outering," or expression of an invisible internal world of meaning, while Westerners view it only as a means of accurate external communication. Cooper explains native rules, laws, and customs as they relate to communication, including such apt advice as, "Never swear at your wife in front of her parents." He even reveals the origins of the clicheof Native Americans saying "how" in those old westerns. This book documents the spirituality, self-respect, and downright common sense of people to whom communication was a release of stored energy and power. Patricia Hassler