ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes how North American Indians, both in Canada and the United States, assert their rights in court to regain possession of land taken from them by the colonial authorities. It focuses on ritualized relationships that obtain between people and land. The book looks at a complex ritual in Nepal that demonstrates linkage between claims over land and power struggles within the caste system. It describes a situation in which a group of cattle herders were transformed over a relatively short time into cultivators. One of the consequences of this transformation is a conceptual shift as to the meaning of land under the two different sets of economic circumstances: pastoralism condition and cultivation and land enclosure condition. The cultures enable them, as individuals and groups, to both define and face problems of everyday life and to deal with them in culturally normative ways.
