Fair Wind: Medicine and Consolation on the Berens River

Fair Wind (Naamiwan) was an Ojibwa healer and leader widely known along the Berens River of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario in the early to mid-twentieth century. In the 1930s he became acquainted with the American anthropologist, A.Irving Hallowell, whose writings and photographs first drew our attention to Fair Wind's life and to the significance of his distinctive drum ceremonial, the roots of which extended to the Drum Dance that originated in Minnesota in the 1870s. This paper traces his life and explores the nature of his religious leadership, drawing upon the recollections of his descendants as well as on the records left by Hallowell and the numerous fur traders, missionaries, and others who visited the region during his long lifetime ( 1851-1944).Au cours de la première moitié du vingtième siècle, la réputation de l'Ojibwa Fair Wind (Naamiwan), guérisseur et chef spirituel vivant le long de la rivière Berens, qui s'écoule entre le Manitoba et le nord-ouest de l'Ontario, prit un un essor considérable. C'est dans les années 1930 qu'il fit la connaissance de l'anthropologue américain A. Irving Hallowell dont les écrits et les photographies attirèrent pour la première fois notre attention sur sa vie et sur la signification d'un rituel du tambour particulier, originaire du Minnesota des années 1870s. Ce portrait de la vie de Fair Wind utilise les souvenirs de ses descendants de même que les notes laissées par Hallowell, par les nombreux missionnaires, trafiquants de fourrures, et autres personnes qui visitèrent la région durant sa longue vie (1851-1944) pour étudier la nature de son autorité religieuse

Investigation of previously implicated genetic variants in chronic tic disorders: a transmission disequilibrium test approach

Genetic studies in Tourette syndrome (TS) are characterized by scattered and poorly replicated findings. We aimed to replicate findings from candidate gene and genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Our cohort included 465 probands with chronic tic disorder (93% TS) and both parents from 412 families (some probands were siblings). We assessed 75 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 465 parent–child trios; 117 additional SNPs in 211 trios; and 4 additional SNPs in 254 trios. We performed SNP and gene-based transmission disequilibrium tests and compared nominally significant SNP results with those from a large independent case–control cohort. After quality control 71 SNPs were available in 371 trios; 112 SNPs in 179 trios; and 3 SNPs in 192 trios. 17 were candidate SNPs implicated in TS and 2 were implicated in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD); 142 were tagging SNPs from eight monoamine neurotransmitter-related genes (including dopamine and serotonin); 10 were top SNPs from TS GWAS; and 13 top SNPs from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, OCD, or ASD GWAS. None of the SNPs or genes reached significance after adjustment for multiple testing. We observed nominal significance for the candidate SNPs rs3744161 (TBCD) and rs4565946 (TPH2) and for five tagging SNPs; none of these showed significance in the independent cohort. Also, SLC1A1 in our gene-based analysis and two TS GWAS SNPs showed nominal significance, rs11603305 (intergenic) and rs621942 (PICALM). We found no convincing support for previously implicated genetic polymorphisms. Targeted re-sequencing should fully appreciate the relevance of candidate genes

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Intangible Culture on Inland Seas, from Hudson Bay to Canadian Heritage

The author of this article examines the ways in which the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage considers the protection of aboriginal languages and provides a case study of the challenges of the preservation of the Cree language in Canada. For Indigenous people, in Canada as elsewhere, questions arise about who speaks for whom; many of their constituents may not identify with the major political organizations that represent their interests to governments and are recognized by government agencies; and other structural and logistical barriers also arise. The paper takes a look at the richness of Aboriginal history around Hudson Bay as held in language and stories, and then discusses the many challenges that a Hudson Bay Cree storyteller, Louis Bird, and his collaborators faced in pursuing an oral history project funded by a Canadian governmental agency with its own parameters and priorities.L’auteur de cet article examine la façon dont la Convention pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel envisage la protection des langues autochtones et peut constituer une étude de cas des difficultés que présente la conservation de la langue cri au Canada. Pour les peuples autochtones, au Canada comme ailleurs, se pose la question de savoir qui parle au nom de qui ; nombre de membres de leurs groupes ne se reconnaissent pas toujours dans les principales organisations politiques qui les représentent auprès des gouvernements et qui sont reconnues par les instances gouvernementales ; et l’on voit également se dresser d’autres barrières structurelles et logistiques. Cet article commence par présenter la richesse de l’histoire des Autochtones des environs de la baie d’Hudson telle qu’elle apparaît dans la langue et dans les histoires, avant de discuter des nombreuses difficultés auxquelles ont été confrontés un conteur cri de la baie d’Hudson, Louis Bird, et ses collaborateurs, lorsqu’ils travaillaient à un projet d’histoire orale financé par un organisme gouvernemental canadien qui avait ses propres paramètres et priorités

Robert Houle : Indians From A to Z

The authors discuss Houle's works and their political and spiritual references in relation to Euro-American and Native cultures, histories, and artistic traditions. Texts critique stereotypes of the Indian, define ethnic identities as dynamic and plural, and situate the work of Native artists within the larger project of reclaiming lands, histories, and cultures by Native people. Biographical notes. 16 bibl. ref