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The goal of this qualitative study is to evaluate whether shamanism, practiced by koçeks and faqrya (the Yezidi terms for traditional shamanic practitioners), continues as a practice among diasporic Yezidis, and, if so, in what manner. I accomplish this through a series of oral, remote interviews with Yezidis living in Germany. The interview subjects comprise a cross-sectional sample that includes men and women from the three Yezidi castes (Sheikh, Pir, Murid). Through the multiple testimonies these interviews garnered regarding shamanic praxis in the context of Germany, I determine that, in spite of the disruptions of forced migration and geographical distance, the Yezidis' practices of prophecy and healing parallel those described in Tyler Fisher, Nahro Zagros, and Muslih Mustafa's prior research in 2016 in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Yezidi homeland. The continuations of the shamanic tradition in the Yezidi diaspora evince strong connections to its origins in Iraqi Kurdistan, principally maintained through travel and remote communications. These practical factors facilitate ongoing connections and continuities. More importantly and of greater interest is the versatility inherent in the Yezidis' perceptions and practice of shamanism— a versatility that illustrates a broader propensity for adaptation characteristic of the Yezidis' belief system, which has enabled them to survive as a vulnerable ethnoreligious group even when far removed from the principal religious sites of their homeland.

This research examines the social construction of a Virginia Indian reservation community during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Between 1824 and 1877 the Iroquoian-speaking Nottoway divided their reservation lands into individual partible allotments and developed family farm ventures that mirrored their landholding White neighbors. In Southampton's slave-based society, labor relationships with White landowners and "Free People of Color" impacted Nottoway exogamy and shaped community notions of peoplehood. Through property ownership and a variety of labor practices, Nottoway's kin-based farms produced agricultural crops, orchard goods and hogs for export and sale in an emerging agro-industrial economy. However, shifts in Nottoway subsistence, land tenure and marriage practices undermined their matrilineal social organization, descent reckoning and community solidarity. With the asymmetrical processes of kin-group incorporation into a capitalist economy, questions emerge about the ways in which the Nottoway resituated themselves as a social group during the allotment process and after the devastation of the Civil War. Using an historical approach emphasizing world-systems theory, this dissertation investigates the transformation of the Nottoway community through an exploration and analysis of their nineteenth-century political economy and notions of peoplehood.

In recent years, interest in early American Indian history and an emphasis on ethnohistorical methods have led to new approaches to the study of cultural contact in colonial America. Several scholars have used cross-cultural groups such as missionaries and white Indian captives as vehicles for analysis. Another group that moved relatively freely back and forth across the cultural divide was that of interpreters. From their intermediate position between European and Iroquois cultures, these men and women interpreted more than languages. Although linguistic skills were essential, successful mediation between Indians and Europeans also required a knowledge of the culture and customs of both groups. They performed a vital role as cultural brokers during all types of intercultural exchange and helped to mediate cultural differences during contact. This study focuses on interpreters among the Iroquois under the English administration of New York, 1664-1775.;Interpreters were most visible during Anglo-Iroquois treaty conferences, and a significant part of this study deals with the development of the interpreters' formal and informal roles at such councils. Interpreters participated in all phases of the conference proceedings, acting as messengers, negotiators, speakers, and translators during both public and private council sessions. In addition, they frequently performed essential services for both the Indian and European participants by acting as advisors on council protocol. In fact, they were primary agents behind the development of a standardized protocol of forest diplomacy during the first half of the eighteenth century.;Interpreters were also active in informal day-to-day exchanges between the British and the Iroquois. They aided missionaries, traders, and military men. They also became the husbands, lovers, fathers, and friends of individuals on both sides of the cultural divide. These less public, less formal exchanges, while difficult to illuminate fully, allow glimpses of the many levels at which mediation and cultural brokerage occurred and indicate how profoundly interpreters and others like them shaped cultural contact in early America. They not only assumed identities and played roles on the stage that spanned the cultural divide--they helped to construct it.

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