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Huichol Women, Weavers, and Shamans. By Stacy Schaefer. (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. xv + 371, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, map, epilogue, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $29.95 paper.)
Few scholars have focused on the role of Indigenous women and identity formation in Mexico. Thankfully, through her decades of groundbreaking research and collaboration with the Wixárika (Huichol) women of La Sierra, Mexico, Stacy Schaefer provides a much needed source for academic research. As an ethnographer, Schaefer produces an impressive, well-detailed description of Wixárika women in multiple aspects of life while focusing on the art of weaving. Huichol Women, Weavers, and Shamans explores the relationship between weaving practices and the metaphysical in wixárika cosmology, and examines how wixárika women transcend and transform their lives through the mastery of weaving traditions.
In the first part of the book, Schaefer discusses her research methodologies and her personal relationships with her collaborators. Chapter Two begins with life-history interviews with Schaefer's collaborators and their families, and continues with a description of Wixárika weaving tools, techniques of weaving, and ways of mixing hues into dyes. Chapter Three outlines Wixárika gender divisions on both micro and macro levels. In Chapter Four, Schaefer delineates a weaver's life journey through textile traditions, detailing every aspect of the lifecycle-birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, middle age, old age, and death-to explain how weavers demonstrate different masteries of the art form throughout...