Traditional religions are striking in their plurality and their similarities. What Do YOU Think? Your Visit to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Hawaii Native American religions still have something significant to offer people of other religions or people of no religion. A s you planned your trip to Hawaii, one of the things you found recommended in all the online tour sites was the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) on the island of Oahu. This is the world’s largest and best-known cultural theme park, and the second most visited site in Hawaii. The PCC has entertained more than 37 million visitors, while presenting the culture of Polynesia to the rest of the world. So you conclude that you should check it out. Your tour begins with eight different “villages” recreated from eight different cultures spread through the southern Pacific. In general, people from those islands appear in the villages as presenters of cultural life in them. You see different aspects of Polynesian life at each of the villages, and you’re given the opportunity to interact with the village presenters. As you go along, you begin to wonder: Where is indigenous religion in these portrayals? When you ask this of your guide, or of any of the onsite interpreters, you get this answer: “Most Polynesian religions are deeply enculturated. Religion isn’t evident to you as a tourist from the Western world, even if you’re a beginning student of religion, unless you know what you’re looking for. The few obviously religious aspects such as special ceremonies and sacred huts are often kept secret in these societies, so we keep them secret too. If you ask them, our guides will do their best to answer your questions about religion.” This satisfies your curiosity for the moment, but later you begin to wonder about it again. In the evening, after a traditional Hawaiian dinner, you attend the “Ha: Breath of Life” show at the PCC outdoor theater. With around one hundred performers and musicians, it tells the story of Polynesian culture through the life of a character named Mana. The story Strongly Disagree 1 2 3 4 Strongly Agree 5 6 7 beings at Mana’s birth and follows his journey through the universal stages of boyhood, young love, respect and responsibility of adulthood, and even the experience of mourning the death of friends. You notice that these events are usually marked by rites of passage with strong religious overtones. You also note that mana is a key concept for understanding Polynesian religions. As you begin formal study of indigenous religions, some questions about them will occur to you. Here are some things that students often wonder about: ● Why are there so many different names for this type of religion? ● Why are they so much alike that they can be studied together, but at the same time so different from one another? ● Why are so many of their practices becoming popular among people of other religions? ● Why do they have relatively little emphasis on teaching when compared to other world religions, and focus so much on rituals? ● How much have they changed, and how much have they stayed the same, especially in the last two centuries or so? < Cofan, a shaman, or tribal religious leader, from the Amazon forest, 2006. 29 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Because of the large numbers of religions that are discussed here, this chapter has a special organization that differs from that of all other chapters (except the last, which has an organization like this chapter). First, we will discuss the variety of names scholars have given to this overall type of religion and then explain why this book calls them indigenous religions. Second, we’ll deal with the typical challenges to the academic study of these religions, especially the kinds of challenges that students face when they begin this study. Third, we’ll draw out the more common characteristics in these religions. In this section, we’ll deal with history, teaching, ritual, and so on. Fourth, we’ll take a closer look at just three indigenous religions: those of the Lakota (lah-KOH-tuh) tribes of North America, the Yoruba (YOHR-uh-buh) tribe of Africa, and the Vodou (VOH-doo, more widely known as Voodoo) of AfricanCaribbean peoples. Names for This Type of Religion LO1 Naming the overall type of religions with which we are dealing can be a challenge. But why is it necessary to name the type of religion at all, if such a comprehensive name may well distort or obscure the individual beliefs? The answer is that religious studies itself has seen this as important despite its downside, so we must grapple with the issue here. This section will deal with generic names, suggesting what is strong and weak about each one, and then we’ll discuss the term settled on in this book: indigenous religions. Traditional Religion Traditional religion correctly implies that religions were present in various societies around the world before European and American expansion. They are traditional in comparison to newer, imported religions. animism Belief that individual However, as we spirits exist not only in people saw in Chapter 1, but also in all individual things in nature all religions are traditions, because totemism [TOHT-em-iz-uhm] they are compreReligion based on the idea that hensive ways of the spirit of one primary source life that come from in nature provides the basis of the past and are human life passed on into the 30 CHAPTER 2 future. It has become common in scholarship to refer to Hinduism, Islam, and the rest as traditions as well as religions. Labeling only one type as traditional is misleading and potentially confusing. Indigenous religions are often just as complex and comprehensive as other world religions. Primitive Religion Primitive religion and the related term primal religion were more popular in the past, especially among cultural anthropologists who used them in a neutral, nonjudgmental way. These terms mostly describe religions that are not derived from other religions, and this is a helpful distinction. However, it’s more difficult to use these terms in a neutral way in religious studies. They can imply that these religions are undeveloped, unchanging, outmoded, or simple. Research into these religions has confirmed just the opposite: They are often just as complex and comprehensive as other world religions. Most religion scholarship avoids primitive today, but primal is occasionally seen. Animism and Totemism Animism and totemism are popular as names for religions in some circles today. Animism (from the Latin anima, “soul, spirit”) is the belief that individual spirits exist not only in people but also in all individual things in nature, whether they appear to be alive or not: individual animals, plants, rocks, thunder and lightning, and mountains, lakes and rivers. In many religions the souls of deceased humans keep a close relationship with the living, so that they are part of myth and ritual. The appearance of the sacred in dreams and visions is a key element of animism. Edward B. Tylor, a founder of the field of anthropology, argued as early as 1891 that all religion began in animism. Totemism is a religion based on the idea that the spirit of one primary source in nature—the land itself, a particular species of animal, or the ancestors—provides the basis of human life. Totemism is found in the Native American tribes of E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. © MARK HERREID/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM © 2009FOTOFRIENDS/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM Close-up of a totem pole with an eagle face Totem poles the northwest coast (with their famous totem poles) and in the beliefs of the Aborigines of Australia. It fits these totemic religions well as a comprehensive name, but it doesn’t fit other religions of this type. A Closer Look: AP PHOTO/CHRISTOPHE ENA Totemism in the Twilight Series Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and Robert Pattinson star in The Twilight Saga. The leader of the Quileute (KWILL-yoot) Nation of Native Americans in northwest Washington first heard about the Twilight Saga novels from their readers, who wanted to know more about the place where the blockbuster vampires-and-werewolves tale of teenage love is set. When the novels were made into films, interest in Quileutes exploded. “Their interest in our tribe was a good surprise,” tribal president Anna Rose Counsell-Geyer said to the press. “People are going to actually get to know the Quileute and we are going to be recognized as a people.” The Quileute’s reservation on the Olympic Peninsula serves as the scenic backdrop to author Stephenie Meyer’s fantasy novels, with thick woods and with rocks and cliffs rising along the Pacific Ocean. The reservation spans only one square mile. The wolf theme of Twilight draws on the Quileutes’ own creation story, which features the transformation of an ancient wolf pack into people who became the Quileute tribe. Since that transformation, the wolf has been the tribe’s totem. In Twilight, the Quileute creation story is used to explain the Wolf Pack, a group of young Quileute men joined by Jacob Black (played in the film by Taylor Lautner), who shape-shift into large, powerful wolves to guard the reservation from marauding vampires. The present-day Twilight Saga marks a departure from Hollywood’s long tradition of portraying the past, not the present, of Native Americans. It also departs from Quileute religion, which does not feature tribal members who can shape-shift into wolves; this isn’t a part of totemism, but instead draws on European werewolf legends. NAMES FOR THIS T YPE OF RELIGION 31 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. manaism [MAH-nah-iz-uhm] Manaism Some cultural anthropologists held that the first stage of all human religion was manaism, a belief in impersonal shaman [SHAH-muhn] Tribal spiritual power and member with special abilities energy that permeates and the authority to act as the world as a whole. an intermediary between the Many religions, they people and the world of gods and spirits (both good and evil) argued, are still based on mana. Manaism is pre-animistic, because power is not connected to spirits in individual natural things (animism) or species/groups of things (totemism). It is drawn from the Polynesian term mana, “spiritual power.” Some see the Yoruban idea of general spiritual power that infuses the universe as an example of mana. For almost a generation at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was quite a disagreement between those who advocated manaism and those who advocated animism as the basis of all later religion. Today this argument is largely a thing of the past. Belief in impersonal spiritual power and energy that permeates the world as a whole called their beliefs shamanic/shamanistic religions. But this is controversial today, especially among cultural anthropologists. Many indigenous peoples around the world, particularly in the Native American tribes, also reject this term as misleading when applied to them. Small-Scale Religions This name, from cultural anthropology, is accurate in its implication that some of the religions to which it refers are held by a smaller number of people, but other so-called small-scale religions are actually practiced by more people than some world religions such as Judaism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Shinto. Other than the relative size of some of them—and there were indigenous empires in the Americas and in Africa with empire-wide religions, we must remember—there is nothing small about these religions. Shamanism TOMÁS CASTELAZO A shaman is a tribal member with special abilities and the authority to act as an intermediary between the people and the world of gods and spirits (both good and evil). He, or rarely she, is known by different names in different tribes; the most common are holy man, medicine man, and healer. Shamans are so common in this type of religion that some scholars have Doña Juanita, a Seri Indian healer in Mexico, with her supplies 32 CHAPTER 2 Catherine Albanese argues that “nature religion” applies to many different sorts of American beliefs, from early colonial times to the contemporary “New Age” movement. Nature Religion Some people informally use the term nature religions. This correctly suggests the stronger connection to the natural environment in indigenous religions than in other world religions. But there is much more to the religion in this chapter than a connection to the natural environment. Moreover, here, “nature” itself is a Western concept that many other societies, especially the societies dealt with in this chapter, do not share. They usually have no strong distinction between the natural and supernatural that nature religions may imply to Westerners. Nor do they see human beings as so superior to the rest of the world that they almost stand above and apart from nature. A 1991 book by the noted religion E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. scholar Catherine Albanese, Nature Religion in America, argues that nature religion applies to many different sorts of American beliefs, from the times of pre-colonial Native American religions to the contemporary “New Age” movement.1 Indigenous Religions In this book we’ll use the term indigenous religions. Indigenous means “native, intrinsic to an area,” especially in the sense of peoples who originate and belong to a specific area. (Students should avoid a common confusion with indigent, which means “poor.”) As we’ll see shortly, indigenous entails a strong sense of belonging religiously to a certain place, in a way that native alone might not. In current usage, indigenous implies religions and cultures that were present in a given place for centuries, and usually millennia, before the coming of other cultures with different religions. When used in this way, it says more than the ambiguous term native. Strictly speaking, everyone born in North America is a “native American,” but most people born in North America don’t belong to continuing indigenous groups of “Native Americans.” Indigenous today often implies a lack of political power in the wider society, when other groups of people have taken over the lands of indigenous peoples. When considering the names for individual indigenous groups, we should ask: What names do the individual groups use, and what names are given to them by others? The European colonizers of Africa and the Americas played a large role in giving them names that Westerners know them by, so we should begin here. In general, European names for indigenous peoples and their religions have been inaccurate. Europeans did not often listen carefully to what other cultures called themselves, but instead imposed their own names or adapted the sound and spelling of indigenous names for tribes to their own languages. This reflects a colonialist mentality. In later chapters, we will see that Westerners also had a key role in the rise of names such as “Hinduism” and “Confucianism.” In recent times there has been a movement to restore the original sound and spelling of these names: “Odawa” for “Ottawa” and “Algonkian” for “Algonquin,” for example. 1 Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Calling the earliest American peoples “Indians” was one of the biggest geography bloopers of all time. The most famous European name for indigenous peoples is the historic Western term for peoples who inhabited the Western Hemisphere: Indians. In 1492 Christopher Columbus supposed that he had reached the islands off China called at the time the “Indies.” However, he unknowingly had discovered a new continent between Europe and Asia, a continent that would become known as the New World. The name “Indians” persisted even when it became obvious that it was wrong, and it was soon used by the English and French as well. To call the indigenous peoples of the Americas “Indians” was one of the biggest geography bloopers of all time, but it has endured for centuries. However, ideas about names do change, and sometimes in unpredictable ways. Today many native peoples in the United States happily call themselves “Indians,” not “Native Americans.” The latest Census Bureau Survey of terminology, done in 1995, showed that 49 percent of native peoples preferred being called “American Indian,” 37 percent preferred “Native American,” about 4 percent preferred “some other term,” and 5 percent had no preference. “Indians” grew in approval by Native Americans at the same time as it became disapproved in wider North American culture. For example, in his highly praised memoir, The Names, the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday speaks about how his mother embraced this name: “[S]he began to see herself as an ‘Indian’. That dim native heritage became a fascination and a cause for her.”2 American Indian is still the main term used in the U.S. Census, although it is still controversial there; many scholars use it alongside Native American, and we will use it occasionally here as well. The safest policy for students and scholars is to indigenous use the names indigenous religions Term for peoples themselves prefer. religions of peoples, In general, many of usually tribes, original to the indigenous peoples of an area North America prefer their 2 N. Scott Momaday, The Names (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976), p. 25 NAMES FOR THIS T YPE OF RELIGION 33 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. local group name as rendered in their language, not an English-language name or a traditional name recognized by whites. Many Sioux Nation Indians prefer to be known by the main name of “Lakota,” “Dakota,” or “Nakota” (each designating groupings within the same culture), and further subgroups are known as well. They use “Sioux” as a name for themselves when speaking to outsiders, but inside their group they use “Lakota” or its variants. In the 2000 U.S. census, fully 75 percent of people who identified their ethnic group as “Indian” also identified their main tribal or national group. Sometimes political differences within a tribe or nation lead to competing preferences for different names in the same group—for example “Navajos” or Diné (“Earth People”). In Canada the broad designation First Nations (note the plural) is widely accepted as a general term by native groups and wider Canadian society, but the individual tribes still use their own names. In Australia and New Zealand, Aboriginals (people there “from the origin”) is commonly accepted as a name, although its use is lessening, with new preference being given to the specific names of the more than two hundred cultural groups that “Aboriginals” encompasses. LO2 Challenges to Study In Chapter 1, we dealt with some challenges to the study of religion in general. When we encounter indigenous religions, some special challenges emerge that don’t apply to most other religions we will deal with in this book. We can list and explain them briefly. Lack of Written Sources Because the cultures in which these religions are based are almost exclusively oral cultures, not writing cultures, their religions have with only a few exceptions First Nations Generic not written down their term for indigenous stories, beliefs, or ritupeoples in Canada als. Where these features of religious life do exist Aboriginals [ab-ohin writing today, most of RIHJ-ih-nahls] Indigenous peoples there “from the them have been written origin” of Australia and down by anthropologists. New Zealand Nor do we have as much archaeological evidence genocide Killing of for indigenous peoples as an entire racial/ethnic/ we do for other world relireligious group gions. Some tribes, along 34 CHAPTER 2 with their particular religions, disappeared long before the coming of Europeans, the victims of disease, famine, and especially intertribal warfare, and we know little about them. In the first chapter of this book, we noted the importance of history as a method of studying religion, but the use of history to study the first Americans is severely limited. This restricts the scope and depth of study. Difficulty Discerning Continuity and Discontinuity By the time Western scholars began to study native groups in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, it was hundreds of years after the natives’ first contact with European Americans. Sometimes this contact led to significant changes in indigenous belief and practices, and at other times it didn’t. As a result, scholars of indigenous religions aren’t certain about how far back many beliefs and practices go: Are they pre-contact or postcontact? For example, some have argued that in Yoruba religion in west Africa, the remote high god developed as an adaptive reaction to Christian and Muslim missionaries who proclaimed a religion of one God. Other scholars dispute this, arguing that indigenous religions often have belief in one high, remote deity without any question of Western religious influence. Mainstream Guilt Many indigenous peoples have been treated brutally during the whole sweep of human history and even prehistory, whenever one group came into the territory of another group and tried to take over. Treatment that was intended to reduce their numbers and their cultures is nothing short of genocide, the killing of an entire racial/ethnic/religious group of people. Today we think that this should have caused second thoughts among people of European origins who took over the lands of indigenous peoples—for example in North America and Africa—but in the ethos of the times it usually didn’t. Many of their present-day descendants are ashamed of the actions of their ancestors and the continued bitter legacy of prejudice and discrimination. This is probably as it should be, but sometimes guilt, powerful emotion that it is, gets in the way of understanding. It can distort the careful study of indigenous cultures and their religions. This is not to say that people shouldn’t regret what happened in the past; it is to say that careful understanding of the past is a key part of knowing what to do in the present if we are to move beyond the ills of the past. E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Misrepresentations in Popular Culture Popular culture, and especially Hollywood film that is so influential in shaping attitudes today, has distorted indigenous religions. On the one hand, films such as Dances with Wolves and Avatar have portrayed indigenous tribes as habitually moral, master ecologists, or even “noble savages.” This last phrase was a theme in the influential work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712– 1778), who held that people are naturally good but that so-called civilization corrupts them. Such an idealized view of indigenous peoples is based on superficial knowledge; if they were in fact so noble, they would not need practices to deal with misdeeds, social disorder, and outright crimes, which they indeed have and use. On the other hand, Hollywood has depicted some religions as dangerously exotic in order to amuse or frighten audiences, as in Apocalypto or the hundreds of films made about the white settlement of the American West. Negative portrayals have seeped down to the life of North American children, where playing games of “cowboys and Indians” has been popular for generations—if historically incorrect, because cowboys rarely fought Indians. Africa has frequently been depicted in film as a place of more savagery than nobility, with religions that are little more than superstitions. Popular culture’s portrayal of Afro-Caribbean religions, Vodou in particular, is probably the worst misrepresentation of all. The 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die, and the more frightening Angel Heart portrayed Vodou as violent and dangerous. The popular Night of the Living Dead, originally from 1968 and remade in 1990, removed zombie lore from its Vodou context, and zombies have become increasingly popular ever since. All these misrepresentations of indigenous religions have affected how we understand them, and this makes it harder to study them today. cultural health. For example, some Lakota leaders opposed this misuse in a controversial 1993 resolution, “Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.” As you conclude this section, you might be wondering: With all these problems in the study of indigenous religions, how can they possibly be studied well? The answer is that they can indeed be studied well, and are. However, the first step in doing so is to recognize and deal with the obstacles to study that the past has put in your way. Now that these are in plain view, we can turn to a discussion of these religions, beginning with their most important common features. Common Features of Indigenous Religions LO3 Despite the terms Native American religion, African religion, or Aboriginal religion, no such things as a whole ever existed. In this section, we will discuss the common key characteristics of indigenous religions. But we must realize up front that there are many significant differences among them. They are as diverse as the cultures and times from which they come. Africa has over three thousand ethnic and language groups, with social organizations from Misuse of Indigenous Rituals Indigenous empire: Mayan temple, Chichen Itza, Mexico © PIERDELUNE/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM In today’s religious climate in North America and Europe, some people freely combine elements of indigenous religions with their own religions or other beliefs. It has become popular in some circles, for example, to use sacred objects of North American indigenous religions such as the stone pipe, medicine bundles, peyote, and sweat lodges in new religious ceremonies in nonNative American religions. This removes indigenous rituals from their deeply embedded cultural context and gives them a meaning that indigenous peoples wouldn’t recognize. Some indigenous groups are offended by this and view it as detrimental to their long-term spiritual and C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S 35 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 0° 20°W 40°E 20°E 60°E 40°N Ca EUROPE sp ia Black Sea n Se a Mediter Madeira Is. Rabat (Portugal) Algiers ra Tunis TURKEY ne TUNISIA MOROCCO an Tripoli JORDAN Cairo ALGER IA EGYPT SAUDI ARABIA Se UNITED ARAB EMIRATES 20°N a OMAN CHAD DJIBOUTI . Lagos Benue R Congo P. CO N Kinshasa IA M Mogadishu KENYA Kampala 0° Equator Nairobi Lake Victoria RWANDA BURUNDI Brazzaville Lake Tanganyika TA N Z A N I A Luanda SEYCHELLES Zanzibar (Gr. Br.) Dar es Salaam COMOROS ANGOLA Lake Malawi ZAMBIA Lusaka Zambezi R. MALAWI R N UGANDA R. D E M . R E P. CONGO RE GABON ETHIOPIA Uele R. GO EQUATORIAL GUINEA SÃO TOMÉ & PRÍNCIPE Addis Ababa CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC CAMEROON (ANGOLA) SU DAN N’Djamena NIGERIA CA B EN I N TO G O A T LAN TI C OC E AN YEMEN AL GUINEA Freetown CÔTE SIERRA LEONE D’IVOIRE GHANA Monrovia LIBERIA Accra Abidjan ERITREA Khartoum Lake Chad BOTSWANA Civil war Tropic of Capricorn Maputo SWAZILAND 0 MAURITIUS Pretoria Johannesburg 400 20°S AD M Anticolonial revolution Antananarivo AG Harare ZIMBABWE MOZAMBIQUE NAMIBIA 0 SO NIGER R. er Ni g l R. GUINEA-BISSAU Bamako AS e SENEGAL ga THE GAMBIA MALI n Se Dakar © CENGAGE LEARNING 2013 OMAN Gu lf QATAR c er Tropic of Can d N il e R . MAURITANIA ia n BAHRAIN L I B YA Re WESTERN SAHARA (MOROCCO) IRAN KUWAIT rs Pe (Spain) Baghdad I R AQ Alexandria Canary Is. CAPE VERDE SYRIA CYPRUS LEBANON ISRAEL Sea SOUTH AFRICA 800 Km. 400 Durban LESOTHO I N D I AN O CEAN Cape Town 800 Mi. Cape of Good Hope Map 2.1 Contemporary Africa Africa contains more than forty nations. Six sub-Saharan African nations and Algeria in North Africa experienced anti-colonial revolutions, and a dozen sub-Saharan nations have been racked by civil wars since independence. In 2011, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt experienced popular revolts. small tribes to large empires. Africa today has more than forty nations (see Map 2.1). In the Americas there have been more than two thousand tribes, some of them organized in large nations or even empires such as those of the Aztecs and Mayans. Each of the world religions that we’ll consider in later chapters has some shared idea of 36 CHAPTER 2 sacred history—of the tradition’s founders, sacred texts, rituals, and the like—that gives it unity. For indigenous religions around the world, diversity is the rule. Despite the terms Native American religion, African religion, or Aboriginal religion, no such singular things ever existed, and neither did indigenous religion. No single system of E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. A Closer Look: Movements toward Indigenous Unity PHILLIP RITZ/GETTY IMAGES ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES Native American dancers enter the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., as the National Powwow organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian begins. A recent development brings a surprising “twist” to diversity within indigenous religions. Indigenous peoples around the world are realizing that they are in a common situation with regard to their dominant Smithsonian National Museum of the cultures and are beginning to act on this American Indian in Washington, D.C. in ways that draw the people and the culture together. become more Pan-Indian, with For example, a Pan-Indian movement wider use of ritual pipe smoking, began in the early 1900s and is now prominent in North sweat lodges, vision quests, sun America. This movement is based on indigenous American dancing, and the use of peyote. peoples’ realization that they share many social and reliPan-Indianism is also found in universities, prisons, military gious concerns today. One example of this is the American forces, and urban settings where general Native American Indian Movement (AIM) organization. Cross-tribal memberidentity is more important than one’s specific tribal identity. ships, powwow (intertribal gatherings, especially of leadThe Pan-Indian movement tries to respect local tribal ideners) networks among tribes, and national lobbying groups, tities and traditions, but some tribes object to the sharing are found in contemporary Pan-Indianism. Increasingly, of rituals. rituals have been shared among the tribes. Their life has belief or ritual unites all African, American, or Aboriginal religions. We present here the basics of indigenous religions, but this doesn’t imply that all indigenous religions are the same. Nor does it imply that indigenous peoples have ever thought of their religions as the same. Indigenous religions usually see themselves as created in their own place, despite what anthropologists think about all humans originating in Africa. The Importance of Place Most anthropologists hold that the human race (Homo sapiens) gradually spread from one area of Africa across much of the globe beginning about 100,000 years ago (see Map 2.2). Many groups of humans have been on the move ever since, carrying their indigenous religions with them. This common origin helps to explain how modern humans are similar genetically but had some Pan-Indian Movement further genetic and cultural begun in the early 1900s adaptations to their new to bring more unity to environments. Despite all North American tribes this movement, indigenous C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S 37 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. TOMAS CASTELAZO a harmonious balance. Many indigenous tribes displaced from their traditional lands in the Americas, Africa, and Australia have sought to reclaim them in some religiously meaningful way, even if they cannot live on their sacred ground. Other religions we will encounter in this book all have holy places, but they are typically not connected to specific places in the ways that indigenous religions are. Chapito, a Seri Indian shaman in northwestern Mexico, points to mountain caves, a place of power. peoples are deeply rooted in a place. Moreover, they usually see themselves as created in or from that place, despite what modern anthropologists think about all humans originating in Africa. For them place is much more than simply a location or even a type of geography such as forest, desert, plains, and so on. Instead, it is a matter of tribal and personal identity. Place has great practical and symbolic significance for indigenous peoples and their religious beliefs and practices. What Vine Deloria Jr. says about Native American religion is true of all other indigenous religions, “The sacredness of lands on which previous generations have lived and died is the foundation of all other sentiments.”3 Stories about the land deal with myths of tribal origins, rituals, and patterns of everyday life. Because indigenous religions are typically rich in traditions that deal with their particular places, they often speak of being created not just from Mother Earth, but from the earth “here in this valley.” They communicate with spirits not just all around them, but “in a mountain cave over there” and reverence in particular a sacred animal “in that rainforest.” Sacred place has a personal status in indigenous religions. For example, at their annual intertribal gatherings in the Sweet Grass Hills of Montana, the Chippewa-Cree people pray that owners of the mines in their sacred hills will see that “these hills are just as alive as anybody, and they want to live too.” People and their places are meant to live together in 3 Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (New York: Putnam, 1973), 278. Global Distribution Indigenous religions are found around the globe today, not just in North America and Africa. In Africa, indigenous religions are spread through most of the continent south of the Sahara Desert. In general, more-traditional forms of indigenous religions are found in central Africa; in the northern and southern thirds of Africa, indigenous religions have largely been blended into Islam and Christianity, respectively. In the Americas, indigenous religions are also widespread: Native peoples with their distinctive religions inhabit the hemisphere from the Arctic to the southern tip of Chile. Many indigenous peoples in the Americas today combine their indigenous religions with Christianity, in Central and South America particularly with Roman Catholic Christianity. Indigenous religions are found around the world today, not just in North America and Africa. In Asia, the picture is the most complex. Indigenous religion persists almost undisturbed in some remote islands in south Asia, especially in Indonesia and Borneo. Polynesian and Micronesian cultures and religions have spread widely, so that today they are found from Hawaii to Taiwan and south. In Tibet, the ancient indigenous Bön religion persists inside and occasionally outside of Tibetan Buddhism, despite persecution in the past by the Buddhist government of Tibet. Folk religions emphasizing local spirits and gods have been common for millennia in China; sometimes these C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S 39 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Many Gods and Spirits © SAM DCRUZ/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM Aboriginal rock art, Kakadu National Park, Australia divine beings have become Daoist divinities. Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto has played such a large role in modern world history that it is often treated separately, as this book will do in Chapter 8. Islam mostly ended pre-Islamic Arab indigenous religion, but other indigenous religions have been incorporated to some degree in some areas where Islam has spread. In Australia and New Zeeland, original forms of Aboriginal religions exist alongside Christianity, although the great majority of Aboriginal people selfidentify as Christians today. In Europe, Christianity gradually overwhelmed indigenous religions, but did so in part by absorbing some indigenous practices such as rituals to counteract evil elves and bringing evergreens into homes at Christmas. 40 CHAPTER 2 A distinctive feature of indigenous religions, especially when compared to many other world religions, is that they aren’t typically focused on one deity. Some African indigenous religions claim to tend toward monotheism, usually because they have one high god, but most believe in many gods. High gods seldom figure into everyday religious life. Instead, they are remote gods, as we’ll see in our treatment of Lakota and Yoruba religion. Moreover, as we saw above, when high deities are regularly invoked, some scholars suspect influence from other world religions. For example, many Native American tribes believe in a high god such as the Great Spirit but don’t talk about him on a regular basis or have rituals addressed to him. Where there is more frequent talk of the Great Spirit, and where this Spirit is seen as a single personal Being, it may well be due to Native American accommodation to Christianity. Deities or spirits are not worshiped in a detached way; they are ritually invoked and engaged as inhabitants and agents of the world itself. Some indigenous religions remember individuals from their past who were influential leaders, but none is seen as a founder of the religion. This emphasizes that native religions are less about human figures, or even gods and rituals, than they are about relationships. Relationships are shaped by prominent humans and gods and guided by morals, myth, and rituals, but they are ultimately about the people’s connection to one another and the group’s connection to the world around it. Influenced by Other Cultures Many world religions have had to deal with competition and conflict with other religions, but almost all indigenous religions have had to deal with being surrounded and suppressed by alien nation–states with alien religions. In Africa, for example, centuries of colonial rule by Europeans, and the Christian missionary efforts that went with it, changed some elements of many African indigenous religions. New gods came forth, and new rituals for worshiping them. Contemporary scholarship acknowledges that culture-contact changes are central to understanding indigenous cultures and their religions today. It studies their continuities and changes, and not simply their complete destruction. Indigenous religions as they exist today are worthy of study and appreciation. We should not use our knowledge of post-contact indigenous religions merely to strip away perceived influences from other religions in order to arrive at E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. hypothetical pre-contact religions. Scholars have little data about the past of indigenous religions that are free from non-native influence, so trying to get back to pre-contact religion is problematic. Indigenous religions themselves often erase any evidence that suggests that some of their beliefs and practices are products of a particular place and time. Oriented More to Practice Than to Belief Indigenous traditions are not belief based, and they have no formal “teachings” on which one can do religious or theological reflection. Belief in gods and spirits is traditional and assumed, a part of the fabric of life, and children are rigorously socialized to know the moral codes of their society. These beliefs Based on Orality, are “more caught than taught,” Story, and Myth Painted tepee of a Plains Indian and they are reinforced in initiamedicine man, with his grandIndigenous religious traditions are tion rituals as children become daughter in the doorway oral, not written, because the culadults. The emphasis is on YALE COLLECTION OF WESTERN AMERICANA, BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND tures in which they are based are practices. Indigenous religions MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY oral cultures. Orality can open up around the world are dedicated more room for adaptive change in religion because of to maintaining personal, group, and cosmic balance not being bound in a book. Most importantly, orality through ritual actions. The purpose of this balance is entails skilled, compelling storytelling. As all skilled that the group may thrive. The scope of rituals in indigstorytellers know, audiences must be “brought into the enous religions is vast. Some mark life-cycle changes story.” In indigenous religions, this is done not just as at birth, beginning of adulthood, marriage, and death. entertainment. In the religion’s stories, each person’s life Others are designed to bless people at trying times, heal enters a larger group story, even a cosmic story that them of diseases of the mind or body, attract rain, or reaches backward and forward in time. Myths and their produce a good hunt or good crops. Still others are for accompanying rituals have a critical role in maintainpurposes of putting curses on people (sometimes called ing good relationships between all sacred beings in the witching) and counteracting curses (unwitching). The universe—human, divine, animals, and even plants. purpose of most indigenous ritual is to control the Scholars have classified different myths according power of the world—to attract to their form and function. Cosmogonic myths about good power when needed and creation help to explain the origin of existence. They to turn away dangerous power. tell how the whole world was created, and especially how the particular tribe telling a myth was created. An In-Group Based etiological myth is one that explains how things have Indigenous traditions around the world are commonly come to be as they are now, as large as why the sun travin-group based. Few indigenous religions seek converts els in the sky or as small as why the beaver has no hair or even allow full entry by people not of their group. As on its tail. The semi-historical myth is the elaboration we saw above, they often of an original happening, usually involving a tribal hero don’t appreciate how others such as the nineteenth-century Lakota leader Sitting have recently adopted some Bull. Telling these myths and stories is a means of comcosmogonic myth of their beliefs and rituals munication between humans and other beings. The Story about creation that helps to explain the origin or have come as “seekers” religious specialist of the indigenous society is often of existence to explore their ways of life. the keeper of these stories and can perform them with This attitude can come as a power. Animals, ancestors, spirits, and gods all cometiological myth Story surprise, even a shock, to pose stories, and people understand the beings through that explains how things well-intentioned outsiders the stories. Narrative is the mode that brings these have come to be as they who are on spiritual jourindigenous traditions to life, by songs, chants, prayers, are now neys that they believe lead ritual dances, folktales, and genealogies. Oral tradition semi-historical to indigenous religions. has not been erased by modernity and literacy, though myth Elaboration of (American popular culture it has taken new forms as stoan original happening, sometimes portrays indigrytellers have found modern usually involving a enous societies as able to be means (including YouTube) for tribal hero joined by outsiders, as for its expression. C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S 41 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. example in the film Dances with Wolves.) Unlike religions that seek converts, indigenous religions are ethnicity based. Either one is culturally a part of the group, or one is not. If a person is inside the group, then the religion of the group pertains to that person, for his or her place in the community and the world depends upon it. In indigenous societies, extensive life-cycle rituals are employed to bring children to fully initiated membership in the group. Apart from this initiation, the group is closed to outsiders, and much of their religious knowledge is secret, sometimes even to members of the tribe. For example, the Dogon (DOH-guhn) people of Mali, West trickster God, spirit, Africa, have many rituals human, or wily animal that are done in masks, but that plays tricks on people the meaning of the masks or otherwise behaves is known only to those against conventional initiated into a society of norms of behavior, often for the good of others specialists. Tribal members may regard others outside the tribe as sincere, but they will not typically make them members of the community and give them access to religious secrets. The long oppression of indigenous peoples by others has made them even more wary of outsiders’ actions and intentions. Indigenous religion maintains the balance of life so that the group as a whole can thrive. The Goodness of the World Indigenous peoples believe that each and every part of nature has a spiritual aspect that makes it live and gives direction to its life. All things in the world are related to humans in a cosmic natural balance. American and African indigenous cultures often see this balance as a circle. The Sioux imitated this natural order by setting up their camp in circles, by sitting in circles for councils and ceremonial occasions, and also by constructing circular tepees. Therefore, these traditions do not deal with “salvation,” “enlightenment,” or even “eternal life.” Means of transcending or transforming this world aren’t important to them, because the world does not need escaping. Its natural harmony needs only to be preserved and lived in. Likewise, these traditions aren’t typically future oriented—for example in believing that 42 CHAPTER 2 this world is heading toward some large religious goal. Rather, the past is privileged for them. The past contains the model for identity, behavior, and blessing in the present and the future. This desire to make the idealized past ever present makes these religions deeply “traditional.” The point of indigenous religion is to maintain the balance of life so that the group as a whole can thrive in the world. The Role of Religious Specialists Most indigenous societies have religious specialists of some sort—people selected or trained to do a variety of religious tasks at a higher level than do others. They are known by a variety of names: “holy men,” “medicine men,” “healers,” “priests/priestesses,” and others. Tricksters are gods, spirits, humans, or wily animals (often a coyote in North American lore) that play tricks on people or otherwise behave against conventional norms of behavior, often for the good of others. “Prophets” (a name, but not a phenomenon, drawn from contact with Christianity) arise from time to time to lead their tribes out of crisis. Perhaps the most notable religious specialist is the shaman, an intermediary or messenger between the human world and the spirit worlds. Many types of shamans exist throughout the world, often varying by tribe, although the main model for shamans comes from Siberian tribes. They are the “spiritual leaders” of their tribes. Mircea Eliade identified their main features as follows: ● The shaman communicates with the spirit world, where good and evil spirits are found. ● The shaman can treat sickness or deal with other problems caused by evil spirits. ● The shaman can employ trance-inducing techniques to leave his body and go to the spirit realm that surrounds this world, or his body can be possessed by the gods or spirits. ● The shaman evokes animal spirits as message bearers to other spirits. ● The shaman can tell the future by various forms of divination.4 4 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York: Random House, 1964). E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. A Closer Look: Debate on Shamanism Some anthropologists today are critical of the recent emphasis on “shamanism” and the work of Eliade and others. Alice Kehoe, in her 2000 book Shamans and Religion, argues sharply that shamans are unique to each culture where they are found and cannot be generalized into a global type of religion called “shamanism.”5 She also opposes 5 “neo-shamanism” in New Age, Wiccan, and other current Western religious movements. These not only misrepresent indigenous practices, but do so in a way that reinforces ideas such as the “noble savage,” an idea Kehoe argues is racist. She is critical of the recent claim that modern-day shamanism survives from the Paleolithic period. Alice Kehoe, Shamans and Religion: An Exploration in Critical Thinking (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2000). exaggerated.” Not only have most native cultures survived against great pressures over the last five centuries, some are now thriving in ways that would have been unthinkable until recently. Native peoples’ numbers and cultural influence have risen dramatically in recent generations, in many but not all parts of the world. Improved standards of living have helped, but more important is that being “indigenous” is shifting in many places from being a social liability in wider society to being a point of pride. EDWARD S. CURTIS 18681952 Reports of the death of indigenous religions are, to adapt a quip by Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. Shaman emerging from forest in a trance after an initiation ritual, 1914 Continuing Vitality The imminent death of indigenous religions has been predicted in the past by politicians, missionaries, and even scholars. If we consider the dire straits of many indigenous religions a century ago, we can understand why some observers have thought that native traditions were dying out. However, many indigenous religions can now say, with the American humorist Mark Twain, when told that his death had been announced in a newspaper, “The reports of my death are greatly We can point to ways in which indigenous religions have flourished over the past half-century. In North America, many native ceremonies that were banned in earlier times are now protected by law. Native peoples have fought hard for these protections and continue to do so, and the wider society has seen the wisdom in preserving them. These include protection of peyote consumption, the use of eagle feathers in rituals, burial protections, and rights to fish and hunt. They also include the return of human remains and traditional religious and cultural objects now in museums and in private collections. Various AfricanCaribbean religions that combine Christianity and native African religions are regaining their voice: Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil, Rastafarianism in Jamaica, and Vodou in Haiti. In Africa, a number of indigenous religions are more prominent today than in the past two hundred years, but many continue to be hard pressed by Christianity and Islam. C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S 43 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Native African churches that combine Christianity ahn THAN-kuh] “All that with key aspects of indigis mysterious, sacred”; enous religions are thrivthe spirit world of the ing, so parts of indigenous Lakota that powerfully African religions survive created the universe within Christianity. The and paradoxically is the increased freedom of reliuniverse gion in China has led to the widespread rebirth and flourishing of suppressed folk religions that seem to have gone underground for more than fifty years. Indigenous religious traditions have persisted because they are, in a word—as the Chippewa poet Gerald Vizenor has often said about his fellow indigenous Americans—“survivors.” Wakan Tanka [WAK- A Native American Religion: Lakota LO4 More than a hundred different Native American tribes are found in North America today. (See Map 2.3 for a historical overview of major Native American tribes, 600–1500 C.E.) The one offered here for study, the Lakota group, which figures large in history and today, is meant to provide a more extensive look into the religious life of that tribe and also as a more definite description of what indigenous religion is. Name and Location term Sioux in 1640. Wars with the Chippewas and the Crees resulted in the reduction of the eastern Sioux and gradual displacement of other Sioux. The western Lakota Sioux were the first to arrive on the plains. Horses, which transformed Plains life, were obtained by the Oglala Sioux about 1750. They were not native to North America, but were introduced by the Spanish and later obtained by the Plains tribes. Basic Features of Lakota Religion The Black Hills is the Lakota’s sacred place of creation and life. For the Lakota, they are the “heart of everything that exists.” A story says that the hills are like a reclining woman whose breasts gave life-giving power; the hills are a mother to the Lakota. The Sioux people were created in particular from the Bear Butte on the eastern edge of the Hills, and there the Creator first gave his sacred instructions to them. Bear Butte is the most sacred of all their holy places, and both Sioux and Cheyenne come here each year for ceremonies. It has often been said that the spirits of the Sioux dead rest in the Black Hills. The spirit world of the Lakota is called Wakan Tanka, which means “all that is mysterious, sacred.” This is a generic, not a personal name. Wakan Tanka is eternal. It powerfully created the universe, and paradoxically it is the universe. The sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth and everything on it (including 44 CHAPTER 2 © JIM PARKIN/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM View from Harney Peak Trail, Black Hills, South Dakota The word Sioux (soo) applies today to seven tribal groups organized into three main political units. It dates back to the 1600s C.E. when the people were living in the western Great Lakes area. The Ojibwa (oh-JIHB-way) tribes called the Lakota Nadouwesou, meaning “poisonous snakes.” This term, shortened by French traders to its last syllable, became Sioux. They called themselves the Seven Fire Places People. The French Roman Catholic missionary Jean Nicolet first recorded the E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 180° 20°W 40°W 160°W 60°W 140°W 120°W ARCTIC OCEAN 100°W 60 °N INUIT 80°W A S R U N INUIT C B T A I R C NORTHEAST . S. de an Gr Approximate extent of mound-building cultures Approximate extent of the Mississippian culture Approximate extent of the Anasazi culture Approximate extent of the Hohokam culture Approximate extent of the Mogollan culture Rio SOUTHWEST SO SO Gulf of Mexico 20°N Carib 0 0 500 bean Sea 1,000 Km. 500 1,000 Mi. © CENGAGE LEARNING 2013 Casa Ca Ca Gra rran Grande AT PA AP SOUTHEAST LA OC N T I EA N C N Adena Cahokia R. Oh io R. IA Chaco Canyon 40 MT A OT TS. Y M i ipp iss PLAINS °N ES IA MINN iss M CK ORN Mesa Verde I Missouri R RO CALIF OC EAN G R EAT B ASI N T CH HWEST I F I C PAC PLATEAU C LA NORT C Hudson Bay Map 2.3 Major North American Societies, 600–1500 C.E. Farming societies were common in North America. The Pueblo peoples in the southwestern desert and the mound builders in the eastern half of the continent lived in towns. The city of Cahokia was the center of the widespread Mississippian culture and a vast trade network. A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA 45 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CANADA Assiniboine Anishinabe . eR us Absarokee Red R. Mo Turtle Mountain (Anishinabe) Red Lake (Anishinabe) Spirit Lake (Yanktonai) Fort Berthold (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa) Bois Forte (Anishinabe) Sisseton Sheyenne R. iss Jam ou ri R. Hidatsa White Earth (Anishinabe) . es R uri R. so Little Mis Leech Lake (Anishinabe) M Hunkpapa NORTH DAKOTA Sans Arc Yanktonai MINNESOTA Lake Traverse (Sisseton) Grand R. Sihasapa Cheyenne River (Lakota) Mi nn Crow Creek (Dakota+ Nakota) Lakota M Jam Cheyenne ta R. Wahpeton R. Winnebago Pawnee Loup Omaha R. . NEBRASKA Iowa sR Omaha ine Mo Des Oglala i ri R. pp IOWA Dakota Brule tte ssi R. ou Two Kettles Pla eso Yankton es Yankton iss Rosebud (Lakota) Niobrara R. rth ssi Wahpekute Minneconjou No Mi SOUTH DAKOTA e R. Pine Ridge (Oglala Sioux) Mile Lacs (Anishinabe) Dakota enn y Che (Anishinabe) Mdewakanton Mandan Standing Rock (Dakota) Fond du lac Arapaho Pl at te R. North Platte R. So ut h Republican R. Location around 1770 COLORADO Current Reservations © WWW.DEMIS.NL KANSAS Smoky Hill R. 0 0 50 100 50 150 Kilometers 100 Miles Map 2.4 Traditional Location of Sioux Tribes around 1770 and Reservations Today humans) are all within Wakan Tanka. This term has often been translated “the Great Spirit,” but this must not be understood as the one God of monotheistic religions. Wakan Tanka is remote and unapproachable, 46 CHAPTER 2 and rituals are not often performed for it. Included in Wakan Tanka are gods and spirits called Wakanpi, who exercise power and control over everything. Because the Wakanpi are incomprehensible to ordinary humans, E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. they enable certain human beings to know them and deal with them. Holy men and (rarely) women have fulfilled this role. They obtain their special knowledge through direct contact with the gods and spirits through dreams and visions. They act as intermediaries through which the power of Wakan Tanka can flow. The Sioux pass down their knowledge, rituals, and beliefs and moral code to the new generations in story form. Tribal history is also passed along orally, but it has always been guided by myths of origin so that the recent past doesn’t contradict the deep past. Elders often gathered the young around the fire to impart important tales. Some of these tales, such as the stories of White Buffalo Calf Woman, can take up to seven evenings to tell and traditionally can only be told when the moon was shining. The Sioux look on death and the afterlife in the spirit world as a natural part of life. Death is painful in close-knit indigenous societies, but funeral rituals help mourners to cope with the pain of loss. The human soul is immortal; it comes from Wakan Tanka at birth and returns to Wakan Tanka at death. Because these spirits are one with Wakan Tanka, they are everywhere and in everything, even at the grave for a period after death. Before battle, Sioux warriors embraced their possible death openly, thus their famous saying “Today is a good day to die.” Death in warfare was preferable to that caused by old age. This heritage of bravery in battle has continued today, and Native Americans have been for almost a century the most highly decorated ethnic group in the U.S. armed forces. Lakotas go on a vision quest to gain a personal religious vision. Lakota Rituals As with most religions, the Lakota believe that their rituals are given to them by the gods. Lakota myths tell of spirits such as White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought them the sacred pipe and its ritual use. Holy men received other rituals during trance-like states. We now discuss Lakota rituals that are still regularly held. Near the time of puberty, Sioux boys, and on occasion girls, go on a ritual of passage to adulthood called a Indian ceremonial pipe vision quest, through which they experience a symbolic vision quest Ritual of death and rebirth and gain passage to adulthood, a vision of their guardian through which one spirit. Through the vision experiences a symbolic quest, each male Lakota death and rebirth and gains a personal religious gains a vision of one’s vision that supplements guardian spirit the group-based religious sacred pipe Pipe understandings of the ritually used as a key tribe. On returning from mediator between Wakan his vision quest, the vision Tanka and humankind seeker typically integrates his vision into the life of the sweat lodge Ritual sauna meant to cleanse community by performing participants in their spirits it ritually in public. This integration of one’s personal vision with the socially regimented roles passed down in tribal societies helps to make a good balance between individual and group life among the Lakota. The modern healing ceremony is shortened from the traditional form. Prayer is still offered to the spirit of the stones, and spirit stones protect against danger or illness. This signifies a belief in a spiritual force in all forms of Creation. It isn’t unusual to see a sacred stone at the bedside of sick or hospitalized Lakota even today. The sacred pipe remains a key mediator between Wakan Tanka and humankind, reinforcing the kinship ties of the people with all spirits in the world. It has become so important as a symbol that it now unofficially stands for the whole of Lakota life; indeed, it has become a Pan-Indian ritual implement. (Sometimes it is called a “peace pipe”; although it was used for peace ceremonies, its ritual use goes far beyond this.) Black Elk reported a common belief when he said that the red stone the pipe is made from symbolizes the earth; a buffalo or other animal carved in the stone represents all animals; the pipe stem, made of wood, symbolizes all growing things; and the feathers attached to it represent the eagle and all winged creatures. All creatures in the natural world “send their voices” to Wakan Tanka when the pipe is smoked. The sweat lodge is a ritual sauna meant to cleanse participants in their spirits. (It wasn’t done, as our saunas today, for muscle relaxÉ ation or cleansing DR AN ILL M/G O of the skin.) It can .C OTO KPH TOC be a domed oblong hut or S I © A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA 47 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. a hole dug into the ground and covered with planks Mildly hallucinogenic or tree trunks. Stones are cactus bud used ritually in heated in an exterior fire Indian ceremonies and then placed in a central pit in the ground inside Native American the lodge. Ritual activities Church Church mainly composed of Native inside and around the sweat Americans, featuring a lodge often include prayers, blend of indigenous North drumming, and offerings to American religions and the spirits. Christianity The use of peyote, a mildly hallucinogenic sun dance Main festival ceremony of many Plains but not physically addictribes, often featuring tive cactus bud, goes self-torture back for centuries among Native Americans in the Southwest. It was used as a medicine in healing ceremoA Native American, probably from nies before its more-modern the Lakota Sioux tribe, blows an and wider ceremonial use. It eagle-bone whistle while participatspread beyond the Southwest ing in the sun dance during the Interat the beginning of the twentiTribal Indian Ceremonial in the late eth century, at a time when Native American culture 1940s in New Mexico. was under much stress, and some Lakota today participate in its use. Participants reported a spiritual cleansing and experienced some physical healing as well. The peyote movement was one factor in the rise of the Native American Church, a blend of indigenous North tearing oneself away from the thongs. The sun dance American religions and Christianity that is still strong is ordinarily held by each tribe once a year at the today. This group has successfully fought the U.S. legal height of summer when the sun is the hottest. It lasts system to get an exemption to use the cactus, which is a from four to eight days, starting at the sunset of the controlled substance, in their ceremonies. Use of peyote final day of preparation and ending at sunset. It shows began to decline in about 2009, because it has been and promotes continuity between life and death, and poorly grown and over-harvested during offers a renewal of the life of the tribe as interrecent years. twined with the life of the earth. This Finally, the sun dance cereritual is still observed by many mony is practiced in almost Native Americans and contintwenty different North ues to be the most important American tribes. It features ritual and festival for the dancing, singing and drumPlains tribes. ming, blowing on eagle-bone whistles, visions, and fasting. Some brave men known as sun dance pledgers come to the fesCulture and tival having already taken a vow Religion to offer their bodies as a painful The buffalo holds a key place in sacrifice to Wakan Tanka for the benLakota life and history. From its efit of their tribe. This usually takes the form hide they made clothing, ropes of being attached to a pole by hide thongs, and snowshoes, and the round, which pierce one’s body above each nipple moveable homes called tipi (also on the chest with a metal hook, and then © ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ERIC ISSELÉE 48 CHAPTER 2 PHOTO BY MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES peyote [pay-YOHT-ee] E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Given the role of the buffalo for the Lakota, its extermination proved deadly for their traditional culture. indigenous Americans, they knew what was best for them. In practice this meant the rapid elimination of native culture, language, and religion. Much of the forced assimilation was targeted at children, because they were more changeable than their parents. In schools Indian children were prohibited from speaking their own language, living out their own culture, or having a tribal identity. Children in both the United States and Canada were separated from their families and sent far off to boarding schools if their family’s influence was viewed as “negative.” Some government officials did have second thoughts about this. For example, in his Indian Commissioner’s report for 1934, John Collier urged an end to this assault on native culture. “The cultural history of Indians is in all respects to be considered equal to that of any nonIndian group.” But this was not to become a widespread conviction until the 1960s. As late as the 1950s, it was U.S. government policy to promote assimilation toward the ultimate goal that Native American identity would disappear. Violent conflict continued in the 1870s. In the Sioux Wars of the 1870s, the Sioux and their allies did battle with the U.S. Army in the Black Hills. This culminated on June 25–26, 1876, with a battle at Little Big Horn in eastern Montana. Hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors under the command of Sitting Bull, a Sioux chief and holy man, met the Seventh Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army, commanded by General George Custer. Custer’s forces were quickly destroyed by Sitting Bull. Although Little Big Horn bolstered Native American morale, it was not to last. The federal military presence continued, as did increasing white settlement in the west, even on Native American reservations. In response to this The sad story of gradual reduction of Native American life continued. Confinement to reservations was soon followed by a government policy to “civilize” Indian peoples by assimilation into mainstream white culture— by coercion if necessary. (Voluntary assimilation happened as well, but on a smaller scale.) Rapid white expansion into western North America meant that Indian conflicts had to end, and therefore much of their land granted by treaties was taken from them. Hiram Price, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1881, said history shows that “Savage and civilized life cannot prosper on the same ground.” This was a wide conviction among Euro-Americans, and by the mid-nineteenth century it was allied to a racist theory of white superiority and the belief that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to occupy all the lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because Euro-Americans as a Ghost dance shirt group assumed that they were superior to assimilation Entry of Indian peoples into mainstream white culture, either voluntary or forced Little Big Horn Battle AP PHOTO/JILL KOKESH phonetically spelled tepee, the Lakota word for “dwelling”). The horns provided spoons, weapons, and ceremonial articles. The buffalo’s sinew was used for bowstrings and sewing materials. The buffalo was the main friend of the Sun, and even controlled all affairs of love. Its spirit cares for the family, for the young of all beings, and for growing plants. Given the place of the buffalo in the life and thought of the Lakota, its extermination proved deadly for their traditional culture. Around 1800 there were possibly sixty million buffalo on the Plains; by 1884 the slaughter by hunters, encouraged by the federal government in part to break the power of the Plains tribes, led to less than one hundred buffalo being left. The Lakota Sioux, along with other Plains tribes, were reduced to dependence on government rations on various reservations of small size and few resources. on June 25–26, 1876, in eastern Montana, in which Sioux and Cheyenne warriors defeated a U.S. Army regiment A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA 49 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. “The people were crying [in the ghost dance movement] for the old ways of living and that their religion would be with them again.” —Black Elk conclude that what began as an accident immediately turned into a battle and then quickly intensified into what has become known as the Massacre at Wounded Knee. Of the U.S. Army troops, twenty-five were killed; of the Lakota, eighty-four men and boys and sixty-two women and girls were killed—virtually half the prisoners. The ghost dance movement was now over. The ghost shirts worn by the Big Foot band had failed to protect them as it was believed they would. To use the words of Black Elk, “the dream died.” Native Americans then settled down to a long period of slow decline on the reservations in the United States and Canada, but over time most left the reservations to assimilate with wider American culture. In the early 1970s, a social and political protest movement arose among Native Americans. At Wounded Knee traditional Indians and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) protested the appalling economic and social conditions on Pine Ridge reservation, which is today the poorest area in the United States. Wounded Knee was chosen for the protest because it symbolized continuity with the suffering of those who died there in 1890. To conclude this section, the Lakotan culture involves living in a healthy, life-giving relationship with the tribe and the land. As we have seen, these relationships have been seriously damaged by forced assimilation, relocations, and government policies under a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs that is widely recognized as incompetent. Also, high unemployment (up to an astounding 90 percent), poverty, domestic violence, and alcohol and drug abuse continue to take a toll on the When reports reached the U.S. Army that the Sioux were arming themselves, wearing their ghost shirts, and acting defiantly to government agents, troops arrived at the Pine Ridge reservation on November 20, 1890, and were deployed to other Sioux areas. Sitting Bull was arrested on December 15 and killed in the process, and his followers fled. Alarmed at Sitting Bull’s death and anxious at the troops’ presence on their reservation, the Big Foot band of Lakota, numbering about 350, headed for Pine Ridge to confront the army. Intercepted by troops, they surrendered and were kept at Wounded Knee. On December 29, as troops sought to confiscate the weapons that some Lakota still possessed, a rifle discharged and shooting Ancient pueblo city of Taos, New Mexico immediately broke out on both sides. Most historians 50 CHAPTER 2 © JOSEMARIA TOSCANO/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM worsening situation, the ghost dance movement inspired by the Paiute arose in the late 1880s. It prophet Wovoka in the would be the last militant 1880s, looking for the attempt to preserve the culrestoration of Indian life and tural life and independence the departure of whites of Native Americans. The Massacre at Wounded ghost dance movement Knee Killing of about was inspired by the vision 150 Lakota prisoners of of the Paiute prophet war by the U.S. Army on Wovoka (also known by December 29, 1890 his “white” name, Jack Wilson). Wovoka’s vision spread, and reached the Sioux late in 1889. It spoke of dead native warriors coming back to life; the restoration of youth to the living; the return of the buffalo, elk, and other game; and the departure of whites. ghost dance Movement E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. reservations. Some signs of hope are appearing: Tribal identities are growing, religious rituals are practiced and taught to new generations, tribal casino gambling recognized by state and federal governments is bringing in financial resources for tribal use (although some consider casinos a mixed blessing), and social ills are being more seriously attended to. Most Indian tribes are realizing that if improvement in their condition is to come, they must bring it themselves. Many Lakota organizations are dedicated to the continuation of traditional ways. The Lakota continue the struggle to hold on to the Black Hills, even refusing in 1980 a $100 million offer in return for giving up their claim to the Hills. This refusal is an indication of Sioux commitment to their traditional culture. The reestablishment of traditional Lakota ways of life requires no less than the rebuilding of the community from the family up, and much is being done to accomplish this. An African Religion: Yoruba LO5 To take a closer look at African indigenous religions, we will examine the Yoruba (YOHR-uh-buh) religion of west-central Africa. Not only is the Yoruba religion important in Africa today, it is also important in the Western Hemisphere, because many Yoruba were taken in slavery to the Americas, where they were instrumental in the founding of new Afro-Caribbean religions. Like most indigenous religions that cover a wide area, the religions of the Yoruba peoples vary significantly in different parts of west-central Africa today, especially in Nigeria. For example, the name of a god often has variations, or the same god may be female in one town and male in the next, and the rituals to worship them may vary as well. These differences inevitably arose as the myths were passed by word of mouth and as different tribes among the Yoruba made changes in their religion over thousands of years. When we add the influence of Christianity and Islam into the Yoruba religion—with some of these “post-contact” changes disputed by scholars—the religion becomes even more diverse and challenging to understand. Despite this internal variety, all Yoruba religion shares a similar structure and purpose. A supreme but remote god rules the world, along with several hundred lower gods, actively worshiped, each of whom has a specific domain of rule. These gods guide believers to find their destiny in life, a destiny that was determined at the moment of reincarnation of one’s soul into a new life but then forgotten. The rituals of the Yoruba identify this destiny for the individual, and this blesses the life of the Yoruba people as a whole. High God and Other Gods The Yoruba all have a high god usually known as Olorun (“the ruler of the sky”) or Olodumare (OH-loh-DOOM-ah-reh, “the all-powerful one”), but occasionally by many other names. They don’t worship Olorun or make sacrifices to him, and he has no priests and no places of worship. He is a remote high god. Although the Yoruba believe that he is the creator and continual giver of life, almighty and all knowing, the Yoruba ignore him in their daily lives. He is invoked only at times of extreme need, and even then with difficulty. Some scholars argue that Olorun developed as a “post-contact” god through the influence of Islamic and Christian missionaries—as an imitation of the God of those religions, but one that could not be integrated into other Yoruba beliefs or rituals. However, belief in Olorun is widespread among the Yoruba, both in those tribes that have not had much contact with Abrahamic religions as well as those that have. Moreover, we can find other African tribes and nations with remote high gods in their traditions. The other main Yoruba gods controlling relations between the earth and the high god are known as orisha. They are the gods with whom humans have contact through myth and rituals. The numbers, relationships, and names of Yoruba gods are exceedingly complex; they form a vast group of supernatural beings numbering between 401 and 601. Some Yoruba myths have a pair of gods, Orishala (also known as Obatala and Orisanla) and his wife Odudua, as the gods who created the world. This association with the creator and high god Olorun gives Olorun “Ruler of the sky,” them a higher status than Yoruba high god that of the other orisha. In orisha Yoruban main one myth, Olorun creates gods who control the main parts of the world relations between the and then has Obatala and earth and the high god, Odudua finish the work. and with whom humans They are so close that some have contact through interpreters have considmyth and rituals ered Olorun and Obatala A N A F R I C A N R E L I G I O N : YO R U B A 51 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CLIFFORDS PHOTOGRAPHY ancestors. The archaeologist who discovered the bundle one and the same. Obatala is often portrayed as a sculpconcluded that it was connected with rites of Shango. tor-god, having the responsibility to shape human bodies. The Yoruba consider physically different humans to be either his special servants or the victims of his displeasure, leaving some room for interpretation. Yoruba religion has a high regard for The Yoruba see the god Ogun as among the most important of the orisha. The god of war, hunting, and metal as a combination of earth, wind, ironworking, Ogun is the patron god of blacksmiths, and fire. warriors, and all who use metals. Yoruba religion has a high regard for metal as a combination of earth, wind, and fire. Ogun also is the god of business deals and Trickster gods can blur the line between good and contracts. In courts in Yoruba areas of Nigeria, Yoruba evil in Yoruban religion. One myth dealing with the god swear to tell the truth by kissing a knife sacred to Ogun. Eshu (EH-shoo) illustrates his trickiness. Pretending to The Yoruba consider Ogun fearsome and terrible in his be a merchant, Eshu sold increasingly expensive gifts revenge; if one breaks a pact made in his name, swift to each of a man’s two wives, sparking a desire in each retribution will follow. One myth that illustrates Ogun’s to outdo the other in purchasing. The battle for the importance tells of the orisha trying to carve a road husband’s favor after this buying spree tore the famthrough dense jungle. Ogun was the only one with the ily apart. This story is told as a cautionary tale against right tools for the task and so won the right to be king the evils of greed and ambition. Eshu is also, but not of the orisha. He did not, however, care for the position, in his trickster role, the divine guardian of houses and and it went to Obatala. villages. The relationship between Eshu and many Shango the storm god occupies an important place Yorubans is so close that they call him Baba (“father”) among these orisha. Shango creates and controls storms in worship. Because tricksters often blur the lines of by throwing “thunderstones” onto the earth. When lightgood and evil, Islamic and then Christian missionaries ning strikes, Shango’s priests search for the stone, which among the Yorubans attacked Eshu as a demonic figure, is believed to have special powers because of its origin. As even as a representation of the Devil. This of course the stones are collected, they are put in Shango’s shrines. A betrays a misunderstanding of a trickster’s overall role myth told about Shango provides a basis for his worship. to promote morality, not undermine it. When he was human and a king of an ancient Yoruba The history of Shokpona (shock-POH-nuh), the god kingdom, he had a powerful charm that could cause lightof smallpox, is an interesting story at the intersection of ning, but he accidentally killed his entire family with it. religion and medicine. Shokpona became important in He hanged himself in sorrow and became deified when he the smallpox plagues that arose in interentered the spirit world. He then gained more power over tribal wars in west Africa. The Yoruba also lightning, as well as over thunder, wind, hail, and saw Shokpona’s wrath in other diseases that other aspects of storms. Most scholars conclude have similar symptoms. Shokpona’s wrath is that his popularity among the Yoruba peoples so terrifying, and worshiping him is so chalmay result from a need to ward off the frequent lenging, that the Yoruba are often afraid to violent storms that strike western Africa. say his name. Instead, they use expressions Shango came to the New World with newly such as “Hot Earth,” referring to high fever, enslaved Africans. In Annapolis, Maryland, a clay and “One whose name must not be spoken in bundle about the size and shape of an American football the dry season.” Priests of Shokpona had great was unearthed by University of Maryland and University power; they could bring this plague down on of London archaeologists at an old crossroads. Dated their enemies, especially by making a ritual to about 1700, it was filled with about three hundred potion from the powdered scabs and dry skin pieces of metal and a stone axe sticking out of those who had died from smallpox. They through the clay. Archaeologists quickly Axes on this devotee's head are Shango’s would pour the potion in an enemy’s area to identified it as African in origin, and most thunderbolts. spread the disease. Although this indirect conlikely used as an object of spiritual power by tact with smallpox was less deadly than conAfrican slaves recently brought to America. tact with living people infected by it, it worked Although almost all slaves were baptized into well enough. However, because smallpox has Christianity, they continued to secretly observe some been eradicated worldwide since about 1980, the “spirit practices” in healing and in worship of their 52 CHAPTER 2 E N C O U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CLIFFORDS PHOTOGRAPHY priests of Shokpona have lost power, and his a divination board. Depending on the results, worship has all but vanished. the diviner then chants a group of poems In the long history of the successcalled Ifa (EE-fuh) verses, presided over ful human battle against smallpox, by a god of the same name. The colAfrican religious practice had a role lection of Ifa verses is vast, and most at a key moment in American hisdiviners know several hundred of A Yoruba divination board tory. When a growing smallpox them by heart. These poems tell epidemic threatened the American short stories of the gods and usually revolutionary army encamped tell of some sacrifice, gift, or action at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in the believer must take. It is then up 1777, George Washington ordered to the believer to discern which of the experimental inoculations based on poems and prescribed actions are correct an account by a famous Christian minisin her or his situation. The Yoruba believer ter in Massachusetts, Cotton Mather (1663– is very active in this process; it’s not just a mat1728). Mather detailed how his African slave named ter of telling one’s problems to a priest and then getting Onesimus had been protected from smallpox by vacsome quick advice. This system of divination has worked cination, probably in a religious ritual of body marking for centuries, probably millennia, and even today many connected with the worship of Shokpona. A small bit Yoruba consult an expert in the Ifa before making any of smallpox scab had been put on his cuts so that, as important decisions. Ifa poems are now being collected Mather later wrote, he “had smallpox and then did not and published, but this takes have it.” Mather himself had successfully inoculated his them out of their living context sons with this procedure, minus the Yoruban religious in Yoruba divination. elements, of course. The procedure was a success at Valley Forge, and the American army was saved. Spirits of the Ancestors Religious Specialists With its many gods that must be attended to with rituals, Yoruba religion has a large place for religious specialists. These specialists don’t teach or administer religious institutions; rather, they preside at the hundreds of rituals. Their skills are passed down from generation to generation. Priests divine the future, offering advice for how to meet it. Male priests are known as a babalawo (buh-BAH-lah-woo), “father of secrets” or “father of the priest” and females as an iyalawo (ee-YAH-lah-woo), “mother of secrets/priests.” They help people to understand the destinies they chose in the spirit world but lost when they were reincarnated on Earth. The priests also give people power and guidance to make their destinies come true. Seeking a priest to help with one’s future is a common occurrence throughout life, but faithful Yorubas take their child to a diviner soon after birth so that the child’s destiny can be made clear. The process of divination varies by priest and region, but this is perhaps the most common method. The believer, usually under some sort of duress, makes her or his way to a diviner. Contrary to many other systems of divination and fortune-telling, the believer doesn’t tell the diviner what the problem is. Instead, the diviner casts sixteen separate palm nuts or a chain of sixteen shells onto The Yoruba treat their ancestors with great respect, which is typical of indigenous societies. Anthropologists debate as to whether the rituals dealing with ancestry—prayers, sacrifices, and the like—are religious or cultural-traditional; but given the deeply enculturated nature of indigenous religion, we can safely conclude that a religious aspect is present. At least a few Yoruba groups believe that ancestors, after death, become semidivine figures. This resembles another aspect of the Yoruba faith: possession of the body by the gods. In these possessions, priests acting as mediums take on the individual characteristics of the gods. The behavioral patterns of how each god takes possession of a medium are so entrenched that mediums as far off as Haiti roll their heads and cross their legs in the same way as mediums of Shango in west Africa. An Afro-Caribbean Religion: Vodou LO6 Those who follow the Afro-Caribbean religion of Vodou number an estimated 5 to 7 million people today. Vodou is widely referred to in North America today, but with much misunderstanding, especially in American AN AFROCARIBBEAN RELIGION: VODOU 53 Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. TURGO BASTIEN Another Call from Africa by Haitian artist Turgo Bastien has African-Caribbean religious themes. popular culture. In this section, we’ll put this religion in its African and New World contexts, and try to shed some light on its significance for today. An important part of our study of Vodou will be to rehabilitate the name of this religion, so that it doesn’t always stir up negative emotions and misleading opinions. Although Vodou is not, strictly speaking, indigenous to Haiti, the centuries of its combination with Roman Catholicism in the setting of the New World qualifies it in the minds of most to be an indigenous religion. Location and Name Like the Brazilian religions Candomblé and Umbanda, Cuban Santería, or Jamaican Rastafarianism, the Vodou religion is based on an African indigenous religion. An estimated 9 to 12 million slaves were brought to the New World between 1500 and 1850, most of them to Brazil and the Caribbean islands, and they brought their religions with them. Like other indigenous religions, Vodou is concerned mainly with bringing its followers into harmony with the gods that control the natural world, so that in this harmony their lives can be happy and blessed. These religions were brought to the New World b...
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