Sixty-one tales narrated by Yaquis reflect this people's sense of the sacred and material value of their territory.

The goal of eliminating disparities in health care in the United States remains elusive. Even as quality improves on specific measures, disparities often persist. Addressing these disparities must begin with the fundamental step of bringing the nature of the disparities and the groups at risk for those disparities to light by collecting health care quality information stratified by race, ethnicity and language data. Then attention can be focused on where interventions might be best applied, and on planning and evaluating those efforts to inform the development of policy and the application of resources. A lack of standardization of categories for race, ethnicity, and language data has been suggested as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data. Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data identifies current models for collecting and coding race, ethnicity, and language data; reviews challenges involved in obtaining these data, and makes recommendations for a nationally standardized approach for use in health care quality improvement.

Sangre llama a sangre. (Blood cries out to blood.)—Latin American aphorism The common "blood" of a people—that imperceptible flow that binds neighbor to neighbor and generation to generation—derives much of its strength from cultural memory. Cultural memories are those transformative historical experiences that define a culture, even as time passes and it adapts to new influences. For oppressed peoples, cultural memory engenders the spirit of resistance; not surprisingly, some of its most powerful incarnations are rooted in religion. In this interdisciplinary examination, Jeanette Rodriguez and Ted Fortier explore how four such forms of cultural memory have preserved the spirit of a particular people. Cultural Memory is not a comparative work, but it is a multicultural one, with four distinct case studies: the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the devotion it inspires among Mexican Americans; the role of secrecy and ceremony among the Yaqui Indians of Arizona; the evolving narrative of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador as transmitted through the church of the poor and the martyrs; and the syncretism of Catholic Tzeltal Mayans of Chiapas, Mexico. In each case, the authors' religious credentials eased the resistance encountered by social scientists and other researchers. The result is a landmark work in cultural studies, a conversation between a liberation theologian and a cultural anthropologist on the religious nature of cultural memory and the power it brings to those who wield it.

"The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a culmination of a centuries-long struggle by indigenous peoples for justice. It is an important new addition to UN human rights instruments in that it promotes equality for the world's indigenous peoples and recognizes their collective rights."--Back cover.

A study of the racial-ethnic history of the United States and the perpetuation of racial hierarchy. Race is a known fiction—there is no genetic marker that indicates someone’s race—yet the social stigma of race endures. In the United States, ethnicity is often positioned as a counterweight to race, and we celebrate our various hyphenated-American identities. But Vilna Bashi Treitler argues that we do so at a high cost: ethnic thinking simply perpetuates an underlying racism. In The Ethnic Project, Bashi Treitler considers the ethnic history of the United States from the arrival of the English in North America through to the present day. Tracing the histories of immigrant and indigenous groups—Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Native Americans, Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Americans—she shows how each negotiates America’s racial hierarchy, aiming to distance themselves from the bottom and align with the groups already at the top. But in pursuing these “ethnic projects” these groups implicitly accept and perpetuate a racial hierarchy, shoring up rather than dismantling race and racism. Ultimately, The Ethnic Project shows how dangerous ethnic thinking can be in a society that has not let go of racial thinking. Praise for The Ethnic Project “An outstanding work that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the past and present racial history of the United States. The book is very well written (Bashi Treitler’s prose is a delight to read) and meticulously researched . . . . The Ethnic Project should definitely be part of the conversation as we press forward with the task of understanding race in the United States.” —Ashley “Woody” Doane, American Journal of Sociology “Treitler offers a succinct history and diagnosis of racial grouping in the U.S., from the nation’s origin to the contemporary moment . . . . The text has solid promise as an introductory ethnic studies course reading . . . . Highly recommended.” —N. B. Barnd, CHOICE “With her ingenious concept of ‘ethnic projects,’ Vilna Bashi Treitler brings a new optic to the study of race . . . . [and] provides an authoritative answer to those who ask the tired question, ‘We made it, why haven’t they?’” —Stephen Steinberg, author of Race Relations: A Critique “Treitler masterfully weaves race and ethnicity into a single historical narrative that reveals the ugly reality of exploitation and stratification that has always undergirded American society.” —Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University

This study is based on a thirty-month residence in Yaqui communities in both Arizona and Sonora and consists of integrating information from documented historical writing, of some primary source documents, of three centuries of contemporary descriptions of Yaqui customs and individuals, and of anthropological studies based on direct observation.