Healing Makes Our Heart Happy: Spirituality and Transformation Among the Juhoansi of the Kalahari

Description

One of the world's oldest continuing societies, the Ju/'hoansi, or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert offer profound insights into what is fundamental to human existence. In the face of outside pressures that threaten the complete disruption of their communal way of life, the Ju/'hoansi find deep spiritual resources in their traditional healing dance. Their indigenous method of healing individuals is also a powerful affirmation of the community, and has recently become a means of settling land and property disputes, problems that never existed in the old days. The healing dance promises to be the crucial factor that allows the Ju/'hoansi to preserve their culture into the 21st century. These inspiring people set an example for us to look beyond the false promises of modern technology in search of the spiritual healing that is so desperately needed in our own culture and within ourselves.

Richard Katz received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught there for twenty years. He is the author of Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung and The Straight Path: A Story of Healing and Transformation in Fiji. He is now a professor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in Saskatoon. Megan Biesele, an anthropologist and development worker in Austin, Texas, spends three months each year in the Kalahari as an educational consultant for the Ju/'hoansi. Verna St. Denis, a Cree Metis, is a professor of Indian and Northern education at the University of Saskatchewan.

"The researchers' sensitivity to the Ju/'hoansi, and their faithful commitment to the people's story or their own use as well as for Westerners, makes this book a rare treasure of integrity and knowledge preserved for all time." * Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind and A Woman's Book of Life *