Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians (review)

Unconventional though it may be to open a review by telling readers how they should approach or "read" a book, such is my impulse in this case. For this is no ordinary ethnographic account, not a work to be "read"—in the usual sense. Its significance lies not, or at least not primarily, in its description and analysis. This new volume assembled by Joel Sherzer is instead a portal into the traditional culture of the Kuna Indians of Panama. By design, it endeavors to draw audiences into that culture, to render that culture immediately accessible to them.

My first piece of advice to would-be readers is this: do not read this book without simultaneously visiting "The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America" website (http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/welcome.html). At that site, once you register, you can listen to the actual recordings of stories, myths, songs, and chants on which the transcriptions and translations in this book are based. Hearing the voices of Kuna performers—immersing oneself in the sounds of the language, the music of the songs, the cadences of the chants, while simultaneously following along in the texts—is crucial to the experience of this book. It lends to the book that magic of ethnography that Clifford Geertz dubbed "the sense of 'being there'."

The book itself consists primarily of texts—transcriptions and translations. There is a short introductory chapter that tells us a little about the 70,000 Kuna Indians who live on the islands along the Caribbean coast of Panama. We learn about the "gathering house, where myths are chanted, counsel is given, political speeches are made, humorous and moralistic stories are told" (2–3). We learn about the "chicha house, where fermented drinks for young girls' puberty rites are made" (3). But mainly this chapter tells us about Kuna "literature." And it is important here that Sherzer uses the word "literature." He means to suggest an analogical relationship between the texts transcribed and translated in this book and the materials taught in English literature classes in the United States—whether Shakespeare or Keats or Malcolm X. These texts are, in some respects, a Kuna analog of literary canons in American or European educational systems.

The question this raises, however, is that of authorship and credit. All of the Kuna materials are traditional—the author, so to speak, is the Kuna people. Yet each individual telling is distinct, a point Sherzer brings home by presenting us with two different versions of the same story. How different or similar is being a teller of a narrative, in the case of the Kuna, to being an author of a literary piece within Western canons? Are tellers perhaps more like musical performers than literary authors?

In any case, after these brief introductory remarks come a dozen chapters, each dealing with a specific performance. The bulk of each chapter is a transcription and translation (into English) of a recording available on the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America website. The transcription occurs on the left page, and on the right is its English translation. Both transcriptions and translations are organized into lines and stanzas, the stanzas separated visually by spaces. There are also commas and spaces suggesting pauses within lines. Sherzer has endeavored to create for the reader a visual aesthetic, analogous to the oral aesthetic associated with actually listening to the performances—being there.

But the transcriptions are an inadequate substitute for listening. Far preferable is reading along while simultaneously listening to the recordings. For example, you can listen to the "One-Eyed Grandmother" told by Pedro Arias. The story is, according to Sherzer, derived from the European Hansel and Gretel tale. But in its telling, it is unquestionably Kuna. The first thing you hear...