struggle and a nexus of religious, political, artistic, andagrarian interests.” It brings together Muslim Sasak partici-pants, Hindu Balinese participants, Indonesian governmentofficials, and international tourists. The Sasak are the major-ity indigenous population while the Balinese who live onLombok today are descendants of colonists who moved east-ward in the seventeenth century. Harnish provides a historyof the two groups and of the festival, arguing that it is themusic of the festival that most unites the Lingsar commu-nity, producing ramé, a state of bustling liveliness and unity.Music, he says, “is the mechanism that generates the festi-val, marks its stages, and provides the spiritual soundscapefor both individual concentration/prayer and martial proces-sional action . . . The interlocking of musical sound andmusical instruments with all of the ritual acts and objectscreates the state of ramé and the spiritual balance andharmony for the successful festival.” Bridges to the Ancestorswill be of interest not only to scholars with a particularinterest in music and ritual, but also to those concerned withreligious identity and religious change.

Mary N. MacDonaldLe Moyne College

DOBU: ETHICS OF EXHANGE ON A MASSIMISLAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA. By Susanne Kuehling.Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 328;maps, diagrams, tables, glossaries, bibliography, index.$44.00, ISBN 0-8248-2731-7.

In Dobu, Kuehling, of the Institut fur Ethnologie atHeidelberg University, offers an empathetic corrective to theview of Dobuans as antisocial and treacherous, an impres-sion that resulted from R. Fortune’s 1932 work, Sorcerers ofDobu, and from missionary narratives. Based on fieldwork inthe D’Entrecasteaux archipelago in Papua New Guinea from1992 to 1994 her book, structured around the theme ofexchange, explains how Dobuans negotiate social and sacredrelationships through gift giving. She shows how an ethics ofexchange prevails in both “traditional” and contemporaryDobu, where most people are members of the United Church,the successor to the Methodist Mission. The book beginswith an exploration of Dobu identity and the Dobu concept ofthe person, which is enriched by Kuehling’s fluency in thelanguage. She presents the Dobuan as a relational personand discusses the contexts of village life in which he or sheis formed. Then, Kuehling investigates a series of gift-givingopportunities. These include help in everyday activities,small gifts, big gifts, negative gifts (sorcery), the Dobu kula(kula being a ceremonial exchange system throughout theMilne Bay region in which people become lifetime partners),church gifts, and mortuary gifts. Dobu will be informative foranyone concerned with gift giving as a social and religiousprocess. It will also be a valuable text in undergraduate andgraduate courses calling for contemporary and revisionistethnography.

Mary N. MacDonaldLe Moyne College

THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE: THE RESONANCEOF TRADITION. Edited by Luke Taylor, Graeme K. Ward,Graham Henderson, Richard Davis, and Lynley A. Wallis.Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 246;figures, tables, bibliographies, index. $31.45, ISBN 0-85575-484-2.

This book brings together papers from a 2001 confer-ence of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander Studies that sought to study “the processes bywhich Indigenous knowledges, and knowledges about Indig-enous peoples, are constructed.” The conference came in thewake of Native Title legislation, which required indigenouscommunities across Australia to demonstrate “traditional”connections to land. The sixteen chapters in the book arearranged into three sections: 1) land resources and knowl-edge; 2) knowledge and colonialism; and 3) the resonance oftradition. In their case studies, contributors describe thevarious ways in which indigenous Australians draw on land,kinship, ceremony, and life history in their construction ofidentity. Moreover, they interrogate the concept of “tradi-tion.” M. Adams and A. English echo a common theme whenthey note, “Aboriginal constructions of nature tend to placepeople and landscapes together, materially, bodily and spiri-tually.” They point out, however, that “[n]ative title and otherrights to land, aspects of Aboriginal identity, and freedom topursue Aboriginal cultural practices are all determined bythe non-Aboriginal structures of the state, which also deter-mine what processes and proofs are necessary.” The essaysquestion whether the concept of “tradition” as articulated inAustralian law has sufficient flexibility and dynamism torepresent Aboriginal connectedness to land and community.This concern will resonate with the experiences of indig-enous people and scholars or indigenous religions in manyparts of the world.

Mary N. MacDonaldLe Moyne College

The Americas: Central andSouth AmericaFIRE UNDER MY FEET: A MEMOIR OF GOD’SPOWER IN PANAMA. By Leo Mahon with Nancy Davis.Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007. Pp. xi + 203. $18.00,ISBN 978-1-57075-698-6.

In 1961, Pope John XXIII asked Roman Catholic reli-gious leaders in the United States to commit ten percent oftheir personnel to missionary work in Latin America. Inresponse, Cardinal A. Meyer, then Archbishop of Chicago,assigned a team of diocesan priests, headed by FatherL. Mahon, to take charge of an “experimental parish” inSan Miguelito, Panamá, in 1963. For the next dozenyears, Mahon and his team were “charting theuncharted”—establishing innovative training programs in animpoverished area where the church’s presence had beenmore nominal than real, and where pastoral ministry had

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been greatly neglected. Particularly informative in recapitu-lating events are the reports that the team periodically sub-mitted to Cardinal Meyer; particularly entertaining as wellas enlightening are the reconstructed dialogues with variouspeople—ranging from poor parishioners to power figures.Almost inevitably Mahon’s ministerial creativity resulted in“challenging the unchallengeable”—bringing him into con-frontation with powerful personalities, both political andecclesiastical, including the Panamanian dictator, O. Torrijos(1929-81), and the papal nuncio, A. Pinci (1912-87). Notsurprisingly, the new Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal J.Cody (1907-82), eventually reassigned Mahon to a parish inChicago. Mahon’s autobiographical “memoir” is a veritablepage-turner that affords candid and thought-provoking com-mentary on topics as diverse as pastoral ministry, mission-ary adaptation, and apostolic creativity, as well as examplesof personal courage, street-wise shrewdness, ecclesiasticalpolitics, and human pettiness—seasoned with a dash of self-justification. Readers should find this memoir difficult to putdown.

John T. FordThe Catholic University of America

WORLDVIEW, THE ORICHA, AND SANTERÍA:AFRICA TO CUBA AND BEYOND. By Mercedes CrosSandoval. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.Pp. xxxvi + 417. $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-3020-3.

The result of a lifetime of work on the religion ofSantería, the book provides a summary of the developmentof Santería from its Yoruba origins, an extended introductionto the deities, including Olodumare, and an analysis of themoral dimensions of the religion and the ways in whichbeliefs and practices have changed with the movement fromWest Africa to Cuba and continue to change both on theisland and among practitioners in the United States.Although much of this work is not new or cutting edge, CrosSandoval brings her own perspective based on an extendedanalysis of this tradition. A welcome addition to the litera-ture that every scholar of African-based traditions will wantto add to their own libraries, this work can also be useful forboth undergraduate and graduate courses and research.

Mary Ann ClarkYavapai College

The Americas: USAPROPHETS OF THE GREAT SPIRIT: NATIVEAMERICAN REVITALIZATION MOVEMENTS INEASTERN NORTH AMERICA. By Alfred A. Cave.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Pp. xii +248. $27.95, ISBN 0-8032-1555-X.

Cave’s book considers the commonalities and differ-ences of five Native American prophetic movements. Itoffers sketches of better-known prophets, including Hand-some Lake and Tenskwatawa, and lesser-known leaders,

such as Neolin and Kenekuk. It supplements stories of theseprophets with information about their people’s religious tra-ditions and historical circumstances. Beyond the storiesthemselves, Cave takes up the interpretative questions thatother historians consider. Which prophets accommodatedwhite culture? Which ones resisted? He argues that thefamiliar dichotomy between resistance and accommodationoverlooks the goal common to native prophets, namely thepeople’s survival achieved by accessing sacred power andreforming behavior. Cave also considers the “Great Spirit” asan eighteenth-century invention. He asks if references to the“Great Spirit” reflect Christian missionaries’ colonization ofnative belief or relate in any way to traditional pantheons ofspirit beings. While he acknowledges the influence of mis-sionaries and the omnipotent God they preached, Cavepoints to traditional spirit beings responsible for creation.He argues that the prophets reconceived of these older,distant figures, bringing them in closer contact with thepeople and their problems. For Cave, the Great Spirit is aninnovation consistent with tradition. While the book is ahelpful introduction to the prophets, it must be said thatCave relies heavily on source material and interpretativework published elsewhere. The book synthesizes scholar-ship rather than providing new historical work. That said,the book’s clear writing style, background on tribal groups,and consideration of interpretative questions makes it idealfor undergraduate classroom use.

Jennifer GraberThe College of Wooster

A SEAT AT THE TABLE: HUSTON SMITH IN CON-VERSATION WITH NATIVE AMERICANS ON RELI-GIOUS FREEDOM. Edited by Phil Cousineau. Berkeley:University of California Press, 2007. Pp. xiii + 203; Cloth,$24.95, ISBN 978-0-520-24439-9; paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-0-520-25169-4.

Cousineau’s volume serves as a companion piece to his2004 film, A Seat at the Table: Struggling for AmericanReligious Freedom. The film and book present H. Smith,authority on and interpreter of the world’s religions, in dia-logue with members of the American Indian delegation tothe 1999 Third Parliament of World Religions held in SouthAfrica. The interviews touch on key aspects of nativepeoples’ fight for religious freedom in the United States,including access to sacred sites and objects, protection ofceremonies, and prisoner rights. Smith and his interlocutorsmake connections between the struggle for religious expres-sion and a web of larger concerns, including scientificmethod, ecological crisis, the human genome project, thedecline of native languages, and the challenges of childrear-ing. The interviews repeatedly return to two observations:that Native American communities live within a moment ofboth significant threat and opportunity, and that the treat-ment of native peoples in the United States reflects aWestern spiritual malaise. Through the interview format,Smith introduces readers to some of the most important

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