A Look Inside the Nacerima People

     One word I would use to describe the Nacerima people is very devote. I would use this word to describe them because they have a very strict set of rituals and ceremonies that they preform on a daily basis as well as annually and so on. They believe if they do not perform these rituals and ceremonies that terrible things will befall them such as losing friends, family, and health. Men, women and children all have their own rituals to preform. All people of the community have shrines in their homes that contain a charm box including the wealthy. The wealthy usually have multiple shrine rooms in their homes, most contain so many charms they forget the uses for them but fear throwing them out.

    This culture is also deeply magic based. All of their rituals and ceremonies are preformed by a series of magical practitioners or they give out the charms and instruction on how to preform each ritual. There is the holy-mouth men, the Water temple priests, and the Listeners. Every aspect of their lives has a magical ritual attached to it even events such as using the bathroom, intercourse, and pregnancy as well as child birth. Their belief in these rituals and the medicine men is so powerful that they continue to perform said rituals regardless of the negative outcomes which tend to occur including death.

    The Nacerima people seem to be very private and secret people. Although many rituals are apart of their daily lives almost all rituals are done alone within the privacy of your own home. Privacy is so important that husbands and wives rarely if not never see each other in the nude. Intercourse is viewed negatively except for on planned occasions set up by the medicine men and solely for procreation purposes. Pregnancy and child birth are also to be kept secret, women must wear clothing to conceal their pregnancies and once it is time to birth the child they must do so on their own with no assistance. They only time in which this privacy is taken away is once they go to the Latipso. The Latipso is the temple of the medicine men, where the ill go to get healed if they can offer a wealthy enough set of gifts and offerings. Here they will be striped of all their cloths and undergo brutal examinations and procedures.

    Unique can be used to describe the Nacerima people. Although ceremonies and rituals as well as the belief in medicine men is not uncommon through out the world, acts such as actively trying to stop and prevent pregnancy to the point that conception is infrequent for the whole people is uncommon. They are also unique in the sense that their beliefs are widely centered around a disgust of the human body due do the aging or decaying of the body over time. There is also much discomfort when it comes to how the body looks especially the female body. 

    The last word I would use to describe the Nacerima people is satirical. Nacerima is American spelled backwards. Everything Minor described in his writings was a satirical take on the American culture . Not only that but it teaches us that all cultures can seem barbaric in nature to some one looking in from the outside and that we should try to understand each others cultures before making harsh judgments. 

1. I tried my best to accurately describe the culture and stick to the facts that I read.  
2. I have to admit that when I first began to read I felt like the culture was very barbaric and extreme, with that being said I really had to think about ways to describe what I was reading without being rude or judgmental. I feel as though unique is biased because what we may find unique or out of the ordinary may be everyday life for someone else.
3. I would change the word unique to uncommon, I feel as though uncommon is a better word because it states that something does not happen often but is not inherently strange where as unique is more leaning towards strange or odd.
4. It is important to avoid being ethnocentric as a cultural anthropologist and just in general because it clouds our view point. This makes it impossible to properly learn and understand another's culture because we end up focusing on the differences and making judgments instead of just trying to learn and seek knowledge. I personally believe description is apart explaining and understanding but it is how you choose to describe that matters. If you only want to see bad in a culture and your purpose is solely to judge then your descriptions will reflect that.