Cunera Buijs Books

In 2015, the Dutch collector Hans van Berkel, granted his Inuit (and Chukchi) art and handicraft collection to the National Museum of Ethnology, now National Museum of World Cultures, in Leiden, resulting from his private collecting of more than thirty years. From the early 1970s up till now, Mr. Van Berkel built up the most important and all-round private Inuit-related collection in the Netherlands, counting ca 700 objects. Hans van Berkel became inspired by the live and work of especially Canadian Inuit hunters and carvers during the early 1970s, due to close contacts with Leo Mol, a renowned sculptor in Winnipeg, Canada. Gifts from him were the first Inuit art objects in what later became the ‘Van Berkel Collection’. This book presents some of his most beautiful or interesting artefacts, objects with a peculiar history. Reflecting his special interests, shamanism and spiritual culture, are particularly well represented in a collection that portrays not only the skilled craftsmanship of Inuit and Chukchi artisans, but also shows the daily life of hunters, reindeer herders and their wife’s, and norms and values of these remarkable cultures of northern Canada, Greenland and Siberia.

People around the world are seeking for new healing methods, and they do so not in isolation but in global interaction. This publication provides new perspectives by combining essays from ritual specialists and scientists active in spiritual healing practices worldwide.