Peter Whiteley has assembled several essays that draw on his field and archival work from 1980 to 1996. Each chapter represents a critique of a particular set of anthropological concepts that have led to the failure of Hopi ethnography to conjoin with Hopi reality. Rather, Whiteley argues, anthropology has not paid enough attention to historical “intentionalities” and, thus, has reinforced the Other as object and infused the gathering of knowledge with hierarchy. In this way, Hopi ethnography has been situated in the context of national and world-system domination. In response, Hopis have begun to treat their cultural forms as property and to participate in the commodification of their own culture as they pursue intellectual sovereignty, for example, by declaring that field notes and photos in museums and archives are tribal property. Whiteley argues that anthropology should be about multifaceted reflection among systems of thought rather than endogamous self-reflection. He attempts to engage Hopi analytical perspectives to show how those perspectives construct, create, and constrain social life and how they may be conjoined with social theory to achieve a more fully intercultural mode of explanation. Through intercultural dialogue, inequalities constructed around cultural and racial differences can be transformed.

In chapter 2 Whiteley argues that structural-functional theories of Hopi social integration do not incorporate a Hopi perspective and, thus, obscure the reality of Hopi society. By focusing on matrilineal descent groups, anthropologists have not paid enough attention to other social relationships, particularly paternal bonds and friendships. Whiteley argues that descent groups should not be regarded as genealogically defined corporate entities formed around joint estates of land and ceremonial ownership. A more realistic perspective is to view descent-group names as cultural constructs used in political and social contexts--today, as well as in the past.

In chapter 3 Whiteley explores how a consideration of Hopi conceptions of power provides a more realistic perspective on Hopi politics than does orthodox political anthropology, which analytically separates “politics” from “religion” and offers a material basis for Hopi inequality. Noting that the anthropological record contains descriptions of both Hopi hierarchy and egalitarianism, Whiteley argues that confusion comes from not factoring in the Hopi view that power emanates from ritual knowledge and that, although this power has material consequences, it is not defined by control over material resources. Whiteley has not undertaken to explain how power and political leadership work today, though he implies continuity with the past. He also hints at significant transformation—noting that the elected tribal council offices are now viewed as a source of power and that ritual symbolism is associated with such offices—but Whiteley needs to explicate contemporary Hopi ideas about power more fully.

Whiteley notes in chapter 4 that in recent years the Hopi have tended to legally change inherited patronyms to Hopi birth or initiation names. He discusses how Hopi names instruct about clan tradition, traditional knowledge, ritual, and the environment, and he shows how individuals use names to construct both personal identity and interpersonal relationships. He convincingly argues that meanings are embedded in the expressed intentions of the name giver and that an understanding of Hopi naming makes clear that structural approaches to the analysis of myth obscure connections between myth and ritual.

Whiteley makes a case in chapter 5 for incorporating indigenous historical consciousness and agency in the analysis of historical process. He discusses an event that took place in 1922: the destruction of the altar of an important ceremony on Third Mesa by a Hopi priest who had converted to Christianity. Whiteley argues that this individual, who intended to challenge and undermine a group of rivals in the secular political context, cast conversion to Christianity as a proper transformation of structure in an autogenous process of cultural reproduction. The effect of this individual’s action was to weaken the traditional ritual system on Third Mesa.

In chapter 6, Whiteley discusses the ways in which religious rituals, sacred landscape, deity masks, and metaphysical beliefs have been appropriated and fetishized by members of the dominant society and refigured as marketable commodities. Hopi perspectives on anthropology and their suspicions of the ethnographic project must be understood in the context of the dominant society’s representations and appropriation of Hopi culture. Whiteley’s point is that anthropologists encourage suspicion when they become disengaged from the lives of their subjects and mystify the politics of their work. He argues for an anthropology that, by paying more attention to Hopi (and, by extension, other peoples’) perspectives and concerns, helps the dominant society appreciate Hopi practice without desecrating it.

In chapter 7, Whiteley explores Hopi conceptions about and uses of natural resources. He shows that a threat to natural resources (here, water) is a threat to kinship, political ritual, and aesthetic life. How Hopis get and use water is central to their identity, religious belief, and daily concerns. Hopi water is being diverted and wasted by the Peabody Coal Company, and as the springs dry up, so does the force of Hopi religious life and culture. Whiteley argues that not enough attention has been paid to cultural and religious conceptions of the environment by industrial concerns and other developers and that anthropologists could help to rectify this situation.

The book is a good example of the value of combining archival and ethnographic studies, and Whiteley is a meticulous researcher. His reexamination of Hopi ethnography will be of great use to specialists on Native America, particularly those interested in the Southwest. Although Whiteley may have overstated the omission of agency or intentionality in social history, his point that anthropologists must pay respectful attention to native perspectives on culture and history is well taken, and, on that basis, this book is an important contribution to the wider anthropological community.