Dream Travelers

In dreams, part of the self seems to wander off to undertake both mundane tasks and marvelous adventures. Anthropologists have found that many peoples take this experience of dreaming at face value, assuming that their spirits literally leave the body to travel, meet other spirits, and acquire valuable knowledge—with dramatic consequences for relationships, social organization, and religions. This book is about Melanesian, Aboriginal Australian, and Indonesian peoples who hold this assumption. Several leading anthropologists contribute theoretically and ethnographically rich chapters showing that attention to these peoples' dream lives deeply enhances our understanding of their cultures and waking lives as well.

People's dreams are as influenced by their culture as anything they do in their waking lives, providing a rich vein of investigation for cultural anthropologists, according to Lohmann (anthropology, Trent U., Canada). Involving a central theme of dreams understood by dreamers as out-of-body experience, 10 essays explore dream experience in among Melanesians of Papua New Guinea, the Australian Aboriginal Mardu and Kukatja, Tiwi Islanders, the Toraja of Indonesia, and others. Topics include dreams as transmitters of religious knowledge, the remembrance of dreams as a booster of self- image through aging, and dreams associated with male and female initiation rites. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Roger Ivar Lohmann is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Trent University, Canada.