Symbolic Immortality

Sergei Kan is professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries and A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska, and editor of Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors.

"A sensitive and comprehensive study of the mortuary complex among the Tlingit Indians of southeastern Alaska. . . . This book will become one of the few classics in the literature of the North Pacific Coast."

• Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments Tlingit Alphabet Tlingit Technical Sound Chart Map of Southeast Alaska, the Land of the Coastal Tlingits Introduction 1. Outline of the Mortuary RitesPart One | The Person and the Social Order2. The “Outside” and the “Inside”: The Tlingit View of the Human Being 3. Shagóon and the Social Person: The Cultural Ideal 4. The Aristocrat as the Ideal PersonPart Two | The Funeral5. Cosmology, Eschatology, and the Nature of Death6. The Deceased, the Mourners, and the Opposites: Actors in the Ritual Drama7. Grief, Mourning, and the Politics of the FuneralPart Three | The Potlatch8. The Potlatch as a Mortuary Ritual 9. Competition and Cooperation, Hierarchy and EqualityPart Four | Death in Northwestern North America and Beyond10. The Tlingit Mortuary Complex: A Comparative Perspective Conclusion: The Tlingit Mortuary Complex and the Anthropology of DeathEpilogue Notes Glossary References Index