Handbook Of North American Indians Languages

Encyclopedic summary of prehistory, history, cultures and political and social aspects of native peoples in Siberia, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.

New from the Smithsonian, the ultimate reference book on Native American communities and their past, present, and future Handbook of North American Indians Volume 1 is the definitive introduction to Native American history and culture. The book provides a much-anticipated opening volume to the Smithsonian’s 20-volume series, the largest collection of knowledge on Indigenous peoples of the US, Canada, and Northern Mexico. The Smithsonian’s Handbook of North American Indians series spans decades, but this introductory volume includes updates on the studies and research of North American Indigenous peoples, as well as contemporary perspectives on issues facing the communities today. Volume 1 is the collaborative effort of 75 contributors from the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, and Germany, including 19 Indigenous authors from across North America. The comprehensive volume contains 36 chapters, 4 appendices, an extensive bibliography with more than 8,000 entries, and 350 illustrations. Handbook of North American Indians Volume 1 brilliantly details the rich and diverse lives, cultures, and experiences of Native Americans.

Includes chapters on Athapascan, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Eskimo and Chukchee.

Two major anthropological works study the roots, structure, and classification of Indian languages.

This comprehensive survey of indigenous languages of the New World introduces students and general readers to the mosaic of American Indian languages and cultures and offers an approach to grasping their subtleties. Authors Silver and Miller demonstrate the complexity and diversity of these languages while dispelling popular misconceptions. Their text reveals the linguistic richness of languages found throughout the Americas, emphasizing those located in the western United States and Mexico while drawing on a wide range of other examples from Canada to the Andes. It introduces readers to such varied aspects of communicating as directionals and counting systems, storytelling, expressive speech, Mexican Kickapoo whistle speech, and Plains sign language. The authors have included the basics of grammar and historical linguistics while emphasizing such issues as speech genres and other sociolinguistic issues and the relation between language and worldview. American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts is a comprehensive resource that will serve as a text in undergraduate and lower-level graduate courses on Native American languages and provide a useful reference for students of American Indian literature or general linguistics. It also introduces general readers interested in Native Americans to the amazing diversity and richness of indigenous American languages.