Katharine Luomala

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Ellen Katharine Luomala (born September 10, 1907 in Cloquet , Minnesota ; died February 27, 1992 ) was an American ethnologist , ethnobotanist, and mythographer .

Life

Katharine Luomala grew up as a Finnish-American farmer child in northern Minnesota, her family name is of Finnish origin. She studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and began her first field research with the Navajo and Kumeyaay Indians (Diegueño) in California in the early 1930s, documenting their rapid changes in living conditions. She received her master's degree in 1931 and her Ph.D. in anthropology. In 1937 she came to Hawaii for the first time on the recommendation of Robert Lowie , in 1946 she moved to the University of Hawaii and began to occupy herself intensively with Pacific studies , with a focus on Hawaiian mythology , Polynesian folklore and ethnobotany . On the Gilbert Islands , now part of the state of Kiribati , she had carried out field research, and the resulting work, Ethnobotany of the Gilbert Islands, was pioneering.

She has taught and researched at several universities (Indiana, Minnesota, Berkeley, Chicago and Hawaii), worked at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu , the Lowie Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley and the National Park Service . Her research was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research , the Guggenheim Foundation , the National Science Foundation , the Finnish-American-Ford-Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies . She was a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association , an honorary member of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO). a. those at the Anthropological Society of Hawaii and the Polynesian Society .

Even after leaving the University of Hawaii in 1973 as “Professor Emeritus in Anthropology”, she continued to work, in total she published around 150 articles in addition to her monographs. Classics were her Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks , Voices on the Wind: Polynesian Myths and Chants and, most recently, Hula Kiʻi: Hawaiian Puppetry .

In 1976, Directions in Pacific traditional literature was published in her honor .

In the mid-1950s, Luomala was the ship owner of the cargo and fishing boat Joyita , which was found as a ghost ship in a half-sunken state off Vanua Levu in November 1955. The 16 crew members and nine passengers had disappeared without a trace.

Awards

In 1983 and 1984 she was honored by the Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts , the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council and the Hawaiʻi State Legislature for her services to the understanding of the Pacific.

Fonts (selection)

  • Navaho life of yesterday and today. National Park Service, Berkeley, California 1938. ( online at National Park Service).
  • Oceanic, American, Indian and African myths of snaring the sun. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Museum bulletin ; 168). Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu 1940.
  • Specialized studies in Polynesian anthropology. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Bulletin. 193). Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu 1947. (Reprinted 1971).
  • Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Bulletin. 198). Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu 1949. (Reprinted 1971).
  • The Menehune of Polynesia and other mythical little people of Oceania. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Museum bulletin ; 203). Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii 1951.
  • Ethnobotany of the Gilbert Islands. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Museum bulletin. 213). Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii 1953.
  • Voices on the wind. Polynesian myths and chants. Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu 1955. (Again 1986, ISBN 0-930897-15-3 )
  • Hula Ki'i. Hawaiian puppetry. The Institute for Polynesian Studies, Honolulu 1984.

literature

  • Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Ed.): Directions in Pacific traditional literature. Essays in honor of Katharine Luomala. (= Bernice P. Bishop Museum special publication. 62). Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, Hawaii 1976.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katharine Luomala: Tipai-Ipai. In: Robert F. Heizer (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 1978, ISBN 0-87474-187-4 , pp. 592-609.
  2. ^ Nancy J. Pollock : Obituary - Katharine Luomala. In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society . Volume 101, No. 2, 1992, p. 109. ( JSTOR 20706439 ). Retrieved February 28, 2017 (English).
  3. ↑ Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Joy Dorothy Harvey: The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z . Taylor & Francis, 2000, ISBN 0-415-92040-X (English).
  4. ↑ David G. Wright: joyita: Solving the Mystery. Auckland University Press, 2002, p. 5.
personal data
SURNAME Luomala, Katharine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Luomala, Ellen Katharine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ethnologist, ethnobotanist and mythographer
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Cloquet , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1992