In 1800s Sonora, Mexico, the Yaquis are in constant struggle to keep their homelands from first the Spaniards and later the Mexicans. The battle between Yaquis and the Mexicans is personal for the Falcon family of Mateo, Petra, Luz, Angel and Cheve, as they fight to survive in the dangerous and violent world they live in. Deer Dancer blends both the mystical culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and historical events from this dark period in Mexico's history to fascinate and educate older young adults and adults alike.

Winner of the American Folklore Society’s Chicago Folklore Prize Yaqui regard song as a kind of lingua franca of the intelligent universe. It is through song that experience with other living things is made intelligible and accessible to the human community. Deer songs often take the form of dialogues in which the deer and others in the wilderness world speak with one another or with the deer singers themselves. It is in this way, according to one deer singer, that “the wilderness world listens to itself even today.” In this book authentic ceremonial songs, transcribed in both Yaqui and English, are the center of a fascinating discussion of the Deer Song tradition in Yaqui culture. Yaqui Deer Songs/Maso Bwikam thus enables non-Yaquis to hear these dialogues with the wilderness world for the first time.

For centuries, shamanic men and women have engaged in shapeshifting rituals - the powerful process of taking on the physical or psychological aspect of an animal to access its strength and perceptions. The imagery of shifting between human and nonhuman form has strongly pervaded folklore, myth, legend, and superstition - from the selkie (or seal shifter) of Celtic myth to bear-human love matches in Native American folklore. In chapters on the buffalo, cat, bird, bear, dragon, frog, and more, Michele Jamal explores the qualities associated with various shapeshifter forms. In her own lyrical style, she retells myths from around the world, and ends each chapter with a poetic and sensual visualization that takes the reader into the heart of each animal's power. Deerdancer shows how to use shapeshifting ritual to find direction, strength, and insight - it will forever transform the way one views other living creatures and the self.

in this funny and original tale, storyteller and collage artist Elisa Klevin creates two unforgettable characters and sets them to match wits with each other about the nature of happiness. Deep in the forest, a silly hunter spies a deer dancing for joy. "Wowie-kazowie!" he exclaims. "A deer i can sell to the circus! Great Gumballs - my fortune is made!" So he lassos the deer and brings her home. "Okay, now dance," he commands. But the clever deer, who not only dances but talks, explains that she can't dance without hearing the sweet singing of birds. And when the hunter snares two songbirds, they won't sing without the pine trees whistling along. And so it goes until the deer's wise means of saving herself culminate in an important lesson gently delivered about the foolishness of trying to capture and isolate nature - and a much better suggestion for how to ensure the hunter's good fortune. Hearty humour, engaging dialogue, and a satisfying spiral of action playfully illustrated make this rich, inspiriting fare. Great gooseberries!

Out of Breath dreams of a powerful white animal that runs unseen through the desert as quickly and easily as water runs through his fingers. His people tell him that visions are suspect. But he leaves to search the desert himself, and returns leading a beast no one has ever seen before, a tall, bony creature who says its name is Horse. The people of Red Earth City are afraid of it -- all except the beautiful, willful Wants the Moon, who first thinks of riding on its back. Together, Out of Breath and Wants the Moon will prove what Horse means to their people and to the Buffalo Hunters of the Grass.

Long ago the ancestors of the Greeks, Romans, and Hindus were one people living on the Eurasian steppes. At the core of their religion was the "shamanic trance," a natural state but one in which consciousness achieves a profound level of inner awareness. Over the course of millennia, the Indo-Europeans divided and migrated into Europe and the Indian subcontinent. The knowledge of shamanic trance retreated from everyday awareness and was carried on in the form of myths and distilled into spiritual practices--most notably in the Indian tradition of yoga. J. Nigro Sansonese compares the myths of Greece as well as those of the Judeo-Christian tradition with the yogic practices of India and concludes that myths are esoteric descriptions of what occurs within the human body, especially the human nervous system, during trance. In this light, the myths provide a detailed map of the shamanic state of consciousness that is our natural heritage. This book carries on from the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell to show how the portrayal of consciousness embodied in myth can be extended to a reappraisal of the laws of physics; before they are descriptions of the world, these laws--like myths--are descriptions of the human nervous system.