In this innovative, performative approach to the expressive culture of the Yaqui (Yoeme) peoples of the Sonora and Arizona borderlands, David Delgado Shorter provides an altogether fresh understanding of Yoeme worldviews. Based on extensive field study, Shorter s interpretation of the community s ceremonies and oral traditions as forms of historical inscription reveals new meanings of their legends of the Talking Tree, their Testamento narrative of myth and history, and their fabled deer dances, funerary rites, and church processions.

Working collaboratively with Yoeme communities,...