The Way of the Pipe explores how Aboriginal spirituality is finding its way into prisons and the role it is playing with Aboriginal inmates seeking to regain and to promote their heritages and identities.The book starts from the premise that this spirituality is not simply "religion" but is a form of therapy, know to medical anthropologists as "symbolic healing." Working from the results of hundreds of interviews with inmates in a number of prisons, Waldram traces the history of Aboriginal spirituality in and out of prison populations. Ironically, it is in prison that many come face to face with spiritual traditions such as the sweat lodge for the first time. The book looks critically at incarceration practices which have not always made it easy for inmates to explore their spiritual heritage.
