Details
Temalpakh [Cahuilla for From the Earth] represents more than ten years of meticulous field work and collaboration by the authors on knowledge and usage of plants among Cahuilla Indians. The work extends our understanding of Cahuilla use of plants far beyond the scope encompassed by David Prescott Barrows in his pioneer monograph Ethnobotany of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, published in 1900. The studies of Bean and Sauvel reveal the high degree of sophisticated knowledge possessed by the Cahuilla concerning plant life, suggest the acuteness of their ecological awareness, and have implications of considerable significance for southern California Indian research as a whole. This new ethnobotany for the Cahuilla covers more than 250 plants and the often fascinating ways in which they were utilized. Additional supplementary material examines the controversial issue of aboriginal agriculture in southern California. Indian people, laymen, and scholars may all profit from and enjoy reading a book that is certain to become a classic in its field. This is still the authoritative work on ethnobotany in Southern California.
About the Malki Museum:
Malki Museum, Inc., is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to saving and sharing the knowledge, cultures and languages of the Indian people of Southern California. The Museum, founded in 1964, was the first Indian-run public museum on a reservation in the United States. Malki has been instrumental in preserving Southern California Indian languages, Cupeno, Luiseno, and especially Cahuilla, with grammar and language books, a bilingual language tape, and videos. All of these are opportunities for Malki to share with Indians and non-Indians knowledge of traditional foods and customs. People of different cultures get to know each other better by working together in a mutual cause and learning to respect each other's differences.
