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Nacireman Body Rituals

3 Pages 636 Words


Nacireman Body Rituals
The Nacirema are a North American tribe living in the area between the Canadian Creek and the Tarahumare of Mexico. They live in a rich environment and while much of the people's time is spent on economic activity a large part of the fruits of their labors is spent on ritual activity. The Nacirema’s body rituals have been studied for centuries. Many ideas have been made concerning these rituals and the meanings behind them. Through my " in-the-field” interactions with the Nacirema, I have observed many interesting rituals performed by their people.
An observation that I have made is the Nacirema seem to enjoy putting themselves in extreme agony. They do various activities that involve a lot of movement and activity that produces a wet substance to appear on their skin. They sometimes use unusual devices to aid in this activity. They seem to do this to improve themselves in various areas of the body. This ritual is very common, but not as common as the next one seems to be.
A strange ritual that I also found was covering large areas of land, staying in a new area for short amounts of time, and then returning home again. They take with them unusual packages, with which they carry various items from their every day lives. There modes of transportation vary however in accordance to their destination. It seemed the longer the distance, they used a birds cousin. In shorter distances they took fast, large mechanical contraptions. Though this ritual is common and seems very popular, this next one is an every day thing. It seems as if this is some sort of protection for the feet. They put these colorful objects on their feet everyday before they go anywhere. They look quite complicated to put on with stringy things going through multiple holes in the object. They seem to be made out of many kinds of materials also, rubber, cloth, ect.
The final observation I made has a lot to do with the first ...

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