Episode 403: What are Indigenous Religions? (Part 1)

Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

THE HISTORY OF WORLD (RELIGIONS), PART I continues with WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS? (PART I). Because face it: you’re not sure. We won’t cover everything you need to know in 40+ minutes this time (or next!), but we sure will get your interest piqued and, hopefully, lay some foundations.

The 101:

(where we did the professor-work)

Today, we’re talking about Indigenous Religions, for two reasons: first, because like we’ve been telling you for 35+ episodes, religion is imperial. The fact that most “world religions” textbooks don’t include Indigenous Religions? Is both white supremacist nonsense and Euro-American imperialism at work.

And second, because we think you can’t call yourself religiously literate without actually knowing what these religions are, how they came about, and why they matter--to scholars, regular folk, and their practitioners. Indigenous religions are beautiful, intricate practices that are also deeply pragmatic and always changing, rooted in specific places, and guess what? Because there are Indigenous communities all over the world, this is a global category—meaning it has obvious limits.

We know we can’t include everybody’s everything. So in a world or global or comparative religions class (or textbook), we make choices about what to include and who to leave out. Same for this podcast. Our goal for today and also for this season is to show you that those choices are political, that they have consequences, and that they—like the study of religion itself—have their roots in white supremacy and imperialism, whether we recognize it or not. 

So few textbooks, classes, podcasts even get to Indigenous Religions, let alone begin with them. We are doing so on purpose and with our chests. But we didn’t do it alone:
We were joined on this episode by extra-special guest expert, Dr. Jolyon Thomas.

Thomas6.jpg

Dr. Thomas is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and his work broadly focuses on religion and the arenas of law, education, and media, and often in Japan. We recommend his work for homework below, but want to call attention at the top to his two books: first, Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (2012), and second, Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (2019).


This episode basically had two parts: first, definitions of “Indigenous religion” and how that term functions; second, Shinto as an example of how the category of Indigenous religions works (and doesn’t).

We talked about how Indigenous religions were seen as “minor,” problematic practices within the world religions model. We also talked about how capital-n Native peoples did not see their cultural practices as religion—back to that J. Z. Smith stuff again. We talked about Indigenous religions as tied to specific places, but where geography and land isn’t just “special” to them, it’s a reciprocal relationship: caring for the land is often like caring for kin.

We talked about the word tribe (and corollaries like “tribal”) as both problematic and legally important in various places. We talked about Indigenous religions as interpreted as inferior, uncultured, backward—and how those discriminatory biases can and did and do lead to actual, physical violence.

Then we talked Shinto, a Japanese religion that is—as our guest expert Dr. Thomas tells us—a place where we can debate what counts as Indigenous. Shinto is a religion in which people do not claim to be religious; it is uniquely tied into ethno-nationalist understandings of Japan; it is fully integrated into normative practices while still being “outside” a system of religion. It is, in short, super interesting for scholars—like you nerds—who want to think about religion, its categories, and where they work (and don’t).

A short video from our colleagues at Religion for Breakfast:

Indigenous Religions are present the world over, and Native peoples are not just a US-Canada-New Zealand population. These vast, diverse practices get lumped together because—you guessed it!—imperialism, specifically white Christian imperialism and colonial histories. Shinto, as but one example, helps us see how this category plays out beyond the West and its spheres of domination; it also helps us illustrate how land, reciprocity, and rootedness can be seen as broad themes in this gigantic category. 

TL;DR: this episode did the following

  1. The category of Native or Indigenous religions is both problematic—look at all the people the world over we’re lumping up in here!—and helpful as we think about all the people who, without it, get left out entirely! In short, this category is wildly imperfect and its imperfection shows us how complicated “religion” and “world” religion is.

  2. Shinto is one of those “is it or isn’t it” labels. We’re putting it here, as part of our indigenous religions set of episodes. Dr. Thomas encouraged us to think more critically about who and when indigenous religions is used to describe traditions. These labels are political.

  3. Shinto is a group of practices that we might want to see people more know about--it’s old! It’s in pop culture! It’s identity marking! It’s tied to empire(s)! It’s political! It’s practical! It’s ALL THE THINGS.

Little Bit, Leave It

(the segment where we leave you with a little bit to remember)

We’re stealing from our UK friends and colleagues and, frankly, very trashy tv with this new segment in which we leave you with the littlest bit, a small way to remember the why the stuff of the episode matters. (The joke, nerds, is this buddy video.)

The-Indigenous-Colour-of-India-The-Indian-Tribes.png

In this episode’s LBLI, Megan talked about how you’re not understanding “religion” if Indigenous Religions aren’t part of your definition of that word. The study of religion would look a whole lot different if it centered on indigeniety, period.

Ilyse brought it back to South Asia, as usual, and specifically India. She urged us to learn more about “tribal” communities in India, and said that we can still see ongoing legacies of British imperialism therein as well as the ongoing internal pseudo-imperialism, definite-bias against “tribals” or Adivasis from mainline, casted Hindus. Both matter. Both tell us something about the ability to practice distinctive, local cultures and their relationships to power, whether that’s imperial power or to cultivate and wield it (as is part of some movements, like among the Naga of northeastern India/northwestern Myanmar).

If you dont know, now you know

(the segment where we get one factoid)

Megan wanted everyone to know about Tanuki. High recommend.

Homework!

(that’s right, nerds, there’s always more to learn)

Do check out guest expert Dr. Joylon Thomas’s full (& impressive) work here.

Megan specifically assigned these books and articles by Dr. Thomas:

Megan then also assigned:

Ilyse suggests:

Nerds of the Week!

Thanks for listening, rating and reviewing. This week’s nerds are: BabaKristian, Nik5579, an unreadable string of emojis you can see below, and The Fandom Menace. You make our whole day.

thank you, whoever you are

thank you, whoever you are

it’s still good to be the king(s)!