territorial pissings

1. I'm vaguely interested in Athapaskan speaking cultures and have been rereading Make Prayers to the Raven, which points out Athapaskan speakers through Oregon and California which I hadn't known about before; Kato, Chilula, Tolowa and some people around the Eel and Rogue rivers. Even more interesting some of them seem to have been studied by Alfred Kroeber.

2. Make Prayers to the Raven includes a glossary with words for "fox" and "wolf" but unsurprisingly given species distribution and competition, doesn't include "coyote." It does have a kenning to avoid mentioning lynx out loud and thereby inviting poor hunting luck, "nodooya," something-going-around. It's occured to me that Dene as other Athapaskan speakers might be using "yenaldlooshi," he-goes-on-all-fours, as a similar kenning to avoid mentioning shapechangers.

3. I've in the middle of reading Primitive Mythology. Fairly early on you get to reading about this central Australian aboriginal circumcision ceremony which is this big long involved crunchy thing with all sorts of little Freudian and Jungian details. You can imagine Campbell having pedantgasms over it. Part of the week long ceremony is a part in which the youth lies down, and watches as different adults embody central cultural concepts and heros, and then lay on top of the kid to convey the magic of the idea. Reading this in 100 degree heat, all that I could think is that, if I were a 13 year old Aborigine, about the last thing I would like is for some big, heavy, warm, bearded guy to sit on me to convey wisdom.