Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

by Richard K. Nelson (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  1986

  $32.61

  Nelson spent a year among the Koyukon people of western Alaska, studying
  their intimate relationship with animals and the land. His chronicle of
  that visit represents a thorough and elegant account of the mystical
  connection between Native Americans and the natural world. -Outside

  This admirable reflection on the natural history of the Koyukon River
  drainage in Alaska is founded on knowledge the author gained as a student
  of the Koyukon culture, indigenous to that region. He presents these
  Athapascan views of the land-principally of its animals and Koyukon
  relationships with those creatures-together with a measured account of his
  own experiences and doubts. . . . For someone in search of a native
  American expression of 'ecology' and natural history, I can think of no
  better place to begin than with this work. -Barry Lopez, Orion Nature
  Quarterly

  Far from being a romantic attempt to pass on the spiritual lore of Native
  Americans for a quick fix by others, this is a very serious ethnographic
  study of some Alaskan Indians in the Northern Forest area. . . . He has
  painstakingly regarded their views of earth, sky, water, mammals and every
  creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. He does admire their love of
  nature and spirit. Those who see the world through his eyes using their
  eyes will likely come away with new respect for the boreal forest and those
  who live with it and in it, not against it. -The Christian Century

  In Make Prayers to the Raven Nelson reveals to us the Koyukon
  beliefs and attitudes toward the fauna that surround them in their forested
  habitat close to the lower Yukon. . . . Nelson's presentation also gives
  rich insights into the Koyukon subsistence cycle through the year and into
  the hardships of life in this northern region. The book is written with
  both brain and heart. . . . This book represents a landmark: never before
  has the integration of American Indians with their environment been so well
  spelled out. -Ake Hultkrantz, Journal of Forest History