Hand Talk: Sign Language among American Indian Nations

An extravagant language of the hands expanded across spoken language barriers. Hand talk proceeds to serve a virtual role in traditional storytelling, ceremonies, legends, prayers, conversational narratives, and as a direct language of American Indians!

Wow, I love this because it is the best research linguistic book to compare differences and similarities between American Sign Language and Indian Sign Language (Hand Talk) and helps my work further. My big accolades to Jeffrey Davis' excellent work!

I am Native American Indian with a passion and calling so to speak to the Deaf Native Americans.

What this book is, and isn't:It is NOT a book to teach anybody American Indian sign language. It IS a volume that is an academic treatise. So if you're looking for a functional book to help teach you sign language, this isn't it.That might not come as a surprise. First, the book is published by Cambridge University Press. Secondly, in the author's preface in the very first paragraph the author states "This book follows anthropological and historical linguistic approaches to the study of indigenous sign language used and transmitted from one generation to the next -- particularly among North American Indians." That's an apt description of what follows in the next 200+ pages. As expected in an academic publication, the author well documents his source material.As to my 2-star rating, I did not "enjoy" this book per se. There's a huge difference between learning a language and studying a language. (I can handle myself in at least two other languages, and while learning them I of course learned/studied their grammars, vocabularies, and cultures). But "enjoying" this book depends upon what you're looking for; if academic analysis, style and verbiage is your pleasure, you've hit paydirt. If wanting to learn sign to use, this is not for you.Harvey Lutske

I thoroughly enjoyed Hand Talk. For linguists, cultural anthropologists, and others in related fields, it serves to fill a void in research on endangered languages, as this signed lingua franca has been largely ignored in scholarship for decades. This book would also be enjoyable to those who are simply interested in language or want to know more about the history of Great Plains tribes. It is true that this book does not teach you how to converse in Plains Indian Sign Language, but author Jeffrey Davis makes that very explicit on the book jacket. There are many reasons for this volume NOT having that role, including respect to the Nations who are still trying to preserve this endangered language. This publication is worthwhile for the litany of historical, cultural, and linguistic information contained within. As an added bonus, Dr. Davis has archived hours of footage of Plains Indian Sign Language users on his website, as well as pictures from the infamous 1930 conference at Browning.

Since I collect books on Indian Sign Language, I added this one to my library. It is quite academic which makes for interesting reading, but if you really want to learn Indian Sign Talk I would recommend starting somewhere else like Tomkins, Clark or Mallory. Still I recommend this to Sign Talk aficionados