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The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. Barbara Tedlock. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005. 350 pp.
Barbara Tedlock is an engaged anthropologist who practices what she studies. For many years she has embodied the empathetic feminist scholar who bridges many boundaries, especially indigenous insider-intellectual outsider, popular writer-academic. Her latest fascinating monograph is the mature work of a confident scholar, bringing many disparate pieces of evidence together in a sweeping summary of the integral role of women in religion and medicine through many centuries.
Tedlock reclaims the significance of balanced, gendersalient power in many "traditional" and "contemporary" healing practices based on spirituality. Drawing from diverse references and experiences, she concludes that gendersensitive spiritual and healing equality "does not mean sameness" (pp. 281-282). While she may occasionally overstress the importance of women, this should be seen as a corrective, not a fault. Particularly moving passages depict her upbringing, including visits to the log home of her wise, nonconformist Ojibwe grandmother-medicine woman. Tedlock's life exemplifies the familiar pattern of thirst for Native knowledge skipping a generation. She also endured a serious childhood illness, an early sign of the widely recognized need for future healers to suffer to more effectively perceive and receive...