Mexico is the country with the largest number of native Spanish speakers in the world. As of 2024, 132.5 million people in Mexico spoke Spanish with a native command of the language. Colombia was the nation with the second-highest number of native Spanish speakers, at around 52.7 million. Spain came in third, with 48 million, and Argentina fourth, with 46 million. Spanish, a world language As of 2023, Spanish ranked as the fourth most spoken language in the world, only behind English, Chinese, and Hindi, with over half a billion speakers. Spanish is the official language of over 20 countries, the majority on the American continent, nonetheless, it's also one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea in Africa. Other countries have a strong influence, like the United States, Morocco, or Brazil, countries included in the list of non-Hispanic countries with the highest number of Spanish speakers. The second most spoken language in the U.S. In the most recent data, Spanish ranked as the language, other than English, with the highest number of speakers, with 12 times more speakers as the second place. Which comes to no surprise following the long history of migrations from Latin American countries to the Northern country. Moreover, only during the fiscal year 2022. 5 out of the top 10 countries of origin of naturalized people in the U.S. came from Spanish-speaking countries.

This dataset comprises interviews conducted between 2016 and 2018 with health service users, health professionals and health system managers in the Rio Negro Indigenous Health District, Amazonas State, Brazil. It focuses in particular on the primary health care services covering approximately 30 communities in the Middle Tiquié region. The Unequal Voices project – Vozes Desiguais in Portuguese – aimed to strengthen the evidence base on the politics of accountability for health equity via multi-level case studies of health systems in Brazil and Mozambique. The project conducted examined the trajectories of change in the political context and in patterns of health inequalities in Brazil and Mozambique, and carried out four cases studies to compare the operation of different accountability regimes across the two countries and between different areas within each country. The case studies tracked shifts in accountability relationships among managers, providers and citizens and changes in health system performance, in order to arrive at a better understanding of what works for different poor and marginalised groups in different contexts. In each country the research team studied one urban location with competitive politics and a high level of economic inequality and one rural location where the population as a whole has been politically marginalised and under-provided with services.

Health inequities - that is, inequalities in health which result from social, economic or political factors and unfairly disadvantage the poor and marginalised - are trapping millions of people in poverty. Unless they are tackled, the effort to fulfill the promise of universal health coverage as part of the fairer world envisaged in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals may lead to more waste and unfairness, because new health services and resources will fail to reach the people who need them most. In Mozambique, for example, the gap in infant mortality between the best-performing and worst-performing areas actually increased between 1997 and 2008, despite improvements in health indicators for the country as a whole. However, while many low- and middle-income countries are failing to translate economic growth into better health services for the poorest, some - including Brazil - stand out as having taken determined and effective action. One key factor that differentiates a strong performer like Brazil from a relatively weak performer like Mozambique is accountability politics: the formal and informal relationships of oversight and control that ensure that health system managers and service providers deliver for the poorest rather than excluding them. Since the mid-1990s, Brazil has transformed health policy to try to ensure that the poorest people and places are covered by basic services. This shift was driven by many factors: by a strong social movement calling for the right to health; by political competition as politicians realised that improving health care for the poor won them votes; by changes to health service contracting that changed the incentives for local governments and other providers to ensure that services reached the poor; and by mass participation that ensured citizen voice in decisions on health priority-setting and citizen oversight of services. However, these factors did not work equally well for all groups of citizens, and some - notably the country's indigenous peoples - continue to lag behind the population as a whole in terms of improved health outcomes.

This project is designed to address the ESRC-DFID call's key cross-cutting issue of structural inequalities, and its core research question "what political and institutional conditions are associated with effective poverty reduction and development, and what can domestic and external actors do to promote these conditions?", by comparing the dimensions of accountability politics across Brazil and Mozambique and between different areas within each country. As Mozambique and Brazil seek to implement similar policies to improve service delivery, in each country the research team will examine one urban location with competitive politics and a high level of economic inequality and one rural location where the population as a whole has been politically marginalised and under-provided with services, looking at changes in power relationships among managers, providers and citizens and at changes in health system performance, in order to arrive at a better understanding of what works for different poor and marginalised groups in different contexts.

As two Portuguese-speaking countries that have increasingly close economic, political and policy links, Brazil and Mozambique are also well-placed to benefit from exchanges of experience and mutual learning of the kind that Brazil is seeking to promote through its South-South Cooperation programmes. The project will support this mutual learning process by working closely with Brazilian and Mozambican...

**When using this data and information, please cite all of the following:

Gillreath-Brown, Andrew. 2019. Creation to Rhythm: An Ethnographic and Archaeological Survey of Turtle Shell Rattles and Spirituality in the United States. Journal of Ethnobiology 39(3):425–444. http://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-39.3.425

Gillreath-Brown, Andrew. 2019*. Turtle Shell Rattle Use by Indigenous Peoples of the Contiguous United States: Ethnographic Documentation. Version 1. Zenodo. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2545989. Date of use: day month year.**

*Please update year and DOI if you cite a newer version. The DOI changes with each version in Zenodo, or you can use the DOI to cite all versions.

**Example: Date of use: 17 April 2019.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS

The purpose of this work is to summarize information from published and unpublished ethnographies that document how Indigenous Peoples of the contiguous United States used—and, in some cases, continue to use—turtle shell rattles. The data contained herein have been used to suggest and support interpretations of turtle shell rattle remains recovered from the archaeological record across the United States.

This compendium draws on an extensive database compiled and maintained by the author. The compendium lists the relevant ethnographic references; it gives the state and region of the United States and the Indigenous group that use(d) turtle shell rattles; it identifies the turtle shell rattle type and the various chelonian taxa by both their scientific and common names; and it describes the documented uses for turtle shell rattles for specific ethnic groups. I intend this compendium to serve as a summary of, and a guide to, the extensive ethnographic literature, which I encourage the reader to consult for additional, more-detailed information, as well as to understand the unique context.

I used several criteria for deciding which information to include in the compendium. First, I was interested in what Indigenous Peoples used turtle shell rattles or turtle substitute rattles for (see Gillreath-Brown 2019) across the United States. I also try to include alternate or contemporary preferred names of the Native American groups in addition to the group name used in the literature. Second, I include primary ethnographic references in addition to other supporting references. In addition to providing the references in a word document, references are also compiled in the author’s Paperpile account, which is publically available at https://paperpile.com/shared/KU55Rg. Third, I was also interested in the type of rattle that was used and what turtle taxa (given by its scientific name according to Turtle Taxonomy Working Group 2017) was used in the construction of the rattle(s). I also provide the common name for scientific names. Fourth, I provide a use category for the rattles, which is comprised of ritual/ceremonial, medicinal/healing, and myth/creation. Finally, an ethnographic description and additional comments are provided to give further context for the turtle shell rattles and to further expand on the use categories. For example, for a use category of ritual/ceremonial, the description and comments field will generally list the dances or ceremonies where turtle shell rattles were used.

A goal of the compendium is to aid researchers in their interpretations of archaeological turtle shell rattle remains, as well as to understand and document Indigenous music. Although turtle shell rattles have been present in the United States since the Archaic Period (ca. 8000–1000 BC), the specific uses of turtle shell rattles vary from group to group and over time. Some Indigenous Peoples may not have traditionally used turtle shell rattles or at least not for specific dances (e.g., Stomp Dance). For example, Howard and Kurath (1959:6) explain that the Ponca (of the midwestern United States) likely borrowed the stomp dance from eastern groups. Many Indigenous Peoples were forced from their traditional homelands and were placed in close proximity to other Indigenous Peoples, such as in the state of Oklahoma, that they may not have interacted with the past. Additionally, the Seminoles of Oklahoma may have learned about the use of condensed-milk can rattles as a substitute for turtle shell rattles from the Natchez-Cherokees around 1920 in Gore, Oklahoma (Howard and Lena 1984:117).

Turtle shell rattle type is defined by the author and is presented in Gillreath-Brown 2019 (see also Gillreath-Brown and Peres 2017, 2018). In published literature, “turtle shell rattle” is phrased many different ways including: turtle shell rattle, terrapin carapace rattles, turtle carapace rattle, shell shakers, terrapin rattle, turtle shell shakers, terrapin shell rattle, turtle shell shackles, tortoise shell rattle, turtle shell leggings, and tortoise rattle (see Gillreath-Brown 2019: Supplemental Content, Supplementary Table 4). Additionally, sometimes turtle shell is hyphenated (i.e., turtle-shell). Tortoise and terrapin are also used as substitutes for “turtle.”

Download the current version of the excel file below.

References cited in the description above are in the word document “References Cited” and in Paperpile, except for Turtle Taxonomy Working Group (2017).

Turtle Taxonomy Working Group [Rhodin AGJ, Iverson JB, Bour R, Fritz U, Georges A, Shaffer HB, et al]. 2017. Turtles of the world: Annotated checklist and atlas of taxonomy, synonymy, distribution, and conservation status. 8th ed. In: Rhodin AGJ, Iverson JB, van Dijk PP, Saumure RA, Buhlmann KA, Pritchard PCH, et al, editors. Conservation biology of freshwater turtles and tortoises: A compilation project of the IUCN/SSC tortoise and freshwater turtle specialist group. Chelonian Research Monographs 2017;7: 1–292. https://doi.org/10.3854/crm.7.checklist.atlas.v8.2017

Acknowledgments

This publication would not have been possible without the support of many people and institutions. I also thank the editors and reviewers for the original article (DOI) that was published in the Journal of Ethnobiology Special Issue, “Ethnobiology Through Song.” I also thank my colleague Dr. Tanya Peres, who I have worked extensively with on this topic.

Andrew Gillreath-Brown is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University.

Low-income cut-offs, after tax (LICO-AT) - The Low-income cut-offs, after tax refers to an income threshold, defined using 1992 expenditure data, below which economic families or persons not in economic families would likely have devoted a larger share of their after-tax income than average to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing. More specifically, the thresholds represented income levels at which these families or persons were expected to spend 20 percentage points or more of their after-tax income than average on food, shelter and clothing. These thresholds have been adjusted to current dollars using the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI).The LICO-AT has 35 cut-offs varying by seven family sizes and five different sizes of area of residence to account for economies of scale and potential differences in cost of living in communities of different sizes. These thresholds are presented in Table 4.3 Low-income cut-offs, after tax (LICO-AT - 1992 base) for economic families and persons not in economic families, 2015, Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.When the after-tax income of an economic family member or a person not in an economic family falls below the threshold applicable to the person, the person is considered to be in low income according to LICO-AT. Since the LICO-AT threshold and family income are unique within each economic family, low-income status based on LICO-AT can also be reported for economic families.Return to footnote1referrerFootnote 2Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the Census of Population.For more information on Aboriginal variables, including information on their classifications, the questions from which they are derived, data quality and their comparability with other sources of data, please refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016 and the Aboriginal Peoples Technical Report, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote2referrerFootnote 3Low-income status - The income situation of the statistical unit in relation to a specific low-income line in a reference year. Statistical units with income that is below the low-income line are considered to be in low income.For the 2016 Census, the reference period is the calendar year 2015 for all income variables.Return to footnote3referrerFootnote 4The low-income concepts are not applied in the territories and in certain areas based on census subdivision type (such as Indian reserves). The existence of substantial in-kind transfers (such as subsidized housing and First Nations band housing) and sizeable barter economies or consumption from own production (such as product from hunting, farming or fishing) could make the interpretation of low-income statistics more difficult in these situations.Return to footnote4referrerFootnote 5Prevalence of low income - The proportion or percentage of units whose income falls below a specified low-income line.Return to footnote5referrerFootnote 6Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the 2016 Census of Population. For more information on Aboriginal variables, including information on their classifications, the questions from which they are derived, data quality and their comparability with other sources of data, refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016 and the Aboriginal Peoples Technical Report, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote6referrerFootnote 7'Aboriginal identity' includes persons who are First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit) and/or those who are Registered or Treaty Indians (that is, registered under the Indian Act of Canada) and/or those who have membership in a First Nation or Indian band. Aboriginal peoples of Canada are defined in the Constitution Act, 1982, section 35 (2) as including the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.Return to footnote7referrerFootnote 8'Single Aboriginal responses' includes persons who are in only one Aboriginal group, that is First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit).Return to footnote8referrerFootnote 9Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the 2016 Census of Population. For additional information, refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote9referrerFootnote 10'Multiple Aboriginal responses' includes persons who are any two or all three of the following: First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit).Return to footnote10referrerFootnote 11'Aboriginal responses not included elsewhere' includes persons who are not First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit), but who have Registered or Treaty Indian status and/or Membership in a First Nation or Indian band.

Low-income cut-offs, after tax (LICO-AT) - The Low-income cut-offs, after tax refers to an income threshold, defined using 1992 expenditure data, below which economic families or persons not in economic families would likely have devoted a larger share of their after-tax income than average to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing. More specifically, the thresholds represented income levels at which these families or persons were expected to spend 20 percentage points or more of their after-tax income than average on food, shelter and clothing. These thresholds have been adjusted to current dollars using the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI).The LICO-AT has 35 cut-offs varying by seven family sizes and five different sizes of area of residence to account for economies of scale and potential differences in cost of living in communities of different sizes. These thresholds are presented in Table 4.3 Low-income cut-offs, after tax (LICO-AT - 1992 base) for economic families and persons not in economic families, 2015, Dictionary, Census of Population, 2016.When the after-tax income of an economic family member or a person not in an economic family falls below the threshold applicable to the person, the person is considered to be in low income according to LICO-AT. Since the LICO-AT threshold and family income are unique within each economic family, low-income status based on LICO-AT can also be reported for economic families.Return to footnote1referrerFootnote 2Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the Census of Population.For more information on Aboriginal variables, including information on their classifications, the questions from which they are derived, data quality and their comparability with other sources of data, please refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016 and the Aboriginal Peoples Technical Report, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote2referrerFootnote 3Low-income status - The income situation of the statistical unit in relation to a specific low-income line in a reference year. Statistical units with income that is below the low-income line are considered to be in low income.For the 2016 Census, the reference period is the calendar year 2015 for all income variables.Return to footnote3referrerFootnote 4The low-income concepts are not applied in the territories and in certain areas based on census subdivision type (such as Indian reserves). The existence of substantial in-kind transfers (such as subsidized housing and First Nations band housing) and sizeable barter economies or consumption from own production (such as product from hunting, farming or fishing) could make the interpretation of low-income statistics more difficult in these situations.Return to footnote4referrerFootnote 5Prevalence of low income - The proportion or percentage of units whose income falls below a specified low-income line.Return to footnote5referrerFootnote 6Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the 2016 Census of Population. For more information on Aboriginal variables, including information on their classifications, the questions from which they are derived, data quality and their comparability with other sources of data, refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016 and the Aboriginal Peoples Technical Report, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote6referrerFootnote 7'Aboriginal identity' includes persons who are First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit) and/or those who are Registered or Treaty Indians (that is, registered under the Indian Act of Canada) and/or those who have membership in a First Nation or Indian band. Aboriginal peoples of Canada are defined in the Constitution Act, 1982, section 35 (2) as including the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.Return to footnote7referrerFootnote 8'Single Aboriginal responses' includes persons who are in only one Aboriginal group, that is First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit).Return to footnote8referrerFootnote 9Users should be aware that the estimates associated with this variable are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain Indian reserves and Indian settlements in the 2016 Census of Population. For additional information, refer to the Aboriginal Peoples Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016.Return to footnote9referrerFootnote 10'Multiple Aboriginal responses' includes persons who are any two or all three of the following: First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit).Return to footnote10referrerFootnote 11'Aboriginal responses not included elsewhere' includes persons who are not First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit), but who have Registered or Treaty Indian status and/or Membership in a First Nation or Indian band.

In the 2022 financial year, First Nations arts and culture received a total of 5.5 million Australian dollars investment from the Australia Council for the Arts. This was around 100,000 Australian dollars less than what was granted in the previous year, however, first nations projects were also funded through other arts funding categories.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

There is great diversity within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, and this is perhaps most apparent in the artforms practiced by each individual clan group. Art is a means for Indigenous people to record, share, and express spiritual stories, and an important connection to culture. The importance and cultural value of Indigenous art is also recognized by non-Indigenous Australians and it continues to gain popularity internationally. As a means of further supporting and developing indigenous arts in Australia, dedicated funding opportunities are available to Indigenous artists and Indigenous run projects. 

Indigenous languages

When British settlers colonized Australia in 1788 there were over 700,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in Australia. They represented around 500 tribes and over 250 individual languages spoken, each with their own oral histories, culture, and belief systems. Today, only around 120 are still spoken and the majority are critically endangered. Indigenous languages Djambarrpuyngu, Pitjantjatjara, and Walpiri are among the those with the largest number of speakers, although, none of them have more than 5,000 speakers each. According to results of the National Indigenous Languages Survey only 13 Indigenous languages are still actively passed on to children. However, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are actively relearning the languages of their ancestors and use of Indigenous languages remains relatively strong in remote areas.

This dataset comprises interviews conducted between 2016 and 2018 with health service users, health professionals and health system managers in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil. The interviews focused in particular on the primary health care services covering two of the poorest sub-municipal districts, Cidade Tiradentes and Sapopemba. The Unequal Voices project – Vozes Desiguais in Portuguese – aimed to strengthen the evidence base on the politics of accountability for health equity via multi-level case studies of health systems in Brazil and Mozambique. The project examined the trajectories of change in the political context and in patterns of health inequalities in Brazil and Mozambique, and carried out four case studies to compare the operation of different accountability regimes across the two countries and between different areas within each country. The case studies tracked shifts in accountability relationships among managers, providers and citizens and changes in health system performance, in order to arrive at a better understanding of what works for different poor and marginalised groups in different contexts. In each country the research team studied one urban location with competitive politics and a high level of economic inequality and one rural location where the population as a whole has been politically marginalised and under-provided with services.

Health inequities - that is, inequalities in health which result from social, economic or political factors and unfairly disadvantage the poor and marginalised - are trapping millions of people in poverty. Unless they are tackled, the effort to fulfill the promise of universal health coverage as part of the fairer world envisaged in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals may lead to more waste and unfairness, because new health services and resources will fail to reach the people who need them most. In Mozambique, for example, the gap in infant mortality between the best-performing and worst-performing areas actually increased between 1997 and 2008, despite improvements in health indicators for the country as a whole. However, while many low- and middle-income countries are failing to translate economic growth into better health services for the poorest, some - including Brazil - stand out as having taken determined and effective action. One key factor that differentiates a strong performer like Brazil from a relatively weak performer like Mozambique is accountability politics: the formal and informal relationships of oversight and control that ensure that health system managers and service providers deliver for the poorest rather than excluding them. Since the mid-1990s, Brazil has transformed health policy to try to ensure that the poorest people and places are covered by basic services. This shift was driven by many factors: by a strong social movement calling for the right to health; by political competition as politicians realised that improving health care for the poor won them votes; by changes to health service contracting that changed the incentives for local governments and other providers to ensure that services reached the poor; and by mass participation that ensured citizen voice in decisions on health priority-setting and citizen oversight of services. However, these factors did not work equally well for all groups of citizens, and some - notably the country's indigenous peoples - continue to lag behind the population as a whole in terms of improved health outcomes. This project is designed to address the ESRC-DFID call's key cross-cutting issue of structural inequalities, and its core research question "what political and institutional conditions are associated with effective poverty reduction and development, and what can domestic and external actors do to promote these conditions?", by comparing the dimensions of accountability politics across Brazil and Mozambique and between different areas within each country. As Mozambique and Brazil seek to implement similar policies to improve service delivery, in each country the research team will examine one urban location with competitive politics and a high level of economic inequality and one rural location where the population as a whole has been politically marginalised and under-provided with services, looking at changes in power relationships among managers, providers and citizens and at changes in health system performance, in order to arrive at a better understanding of what works for different poor and marginalised groups in different contexts. As two Portuguese-speaking countries that have increasingly close economic, political and policy links, Brazil and Mozambique are also well-placed to benefit from exchanges of experience and mutual learning of the kind that Brazil is seeking to promote through its South-South Cooperation programmes. The project will support this mutual learning process by working closely with Brazilian and Mozambican organisations that...