Episode 404: What are Indigenous Religions? (Part 2)

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 2). Because face it: you’re not sure. We won’t cover everything you need to know in 40+ minutes this time, but we sure will get your interest piqued and, hopefully, build on some foundations we laid down last time.

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. Abel Gomez.

Dr. Abel Gomez is a Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. His work is about place, memory, and identity, particularly within Indigenous, Latinx, and Neo-Pagan religious traditions.


This episode basically had two parts: first, reiteration about “Indigenous religion” and how that term functions; second, how Native practices in North America work as examples 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 how Indigenous religious practices and cultures and peoples don’t get talked about by mainstream anything. And we cannot say this frequently enough: Indigenous religions and peoples are consistently, shockingly, historically erased in every and all metrics we might use to measure that. 

We talked about literal disappearances of Indigenous cultures, communities, and peoples. So, TW for the episode: we mention the murder and removal of Native children; we talked about the disproportionate ways that Native women are murdered, missing, and unaccounted for; we talk about the abuse of Native people in churches in what is now Canada.

Our primary example was Mni Wiconi, which in Lakota means “water is life,” and was both an inspiration and a slogan for the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the US. Super quick, perhaps especially for our non-American listeners though we can’t assume anything, that is a 1,172-mile-long oil pipeline that cuts through the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and illinois. Crucially, and why folks know about this pipeline, is because of major protests that made headline news in 2016. 

We recommend this short film, too.

Then Dr. Abel Gomez joined us! He talked about Native religions as present, current, and ongoing; he talked about the Salmon Ceremony of the Coast Salish as an example of how rituals tie place, land, people, and animals together, as well as set up patterns of care for all. He also mentioned the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Campaign to Protect Juristac. We learned so much from Dr. Gomez.

You can learn more from him here, too, in a short video from our colleagues at Religion for Breakfast, with our guest Dr. Abel Gomez featured:

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. Even while we complain about “religion is not a Native category” and that it is an imperial framework made up by some Oxbridge old dudes, the FACT is we cannot throw religion away because Indigenous peoples reference religion all the damn time. They talk about religion, they push back on how religion gets used, on how religious freedom ought to function in the US, indigenous people are doing this labor and talking about religion and describing significance. So even as we problematize and criticize the category, as we damn well should, it’s just not as easy as throwing it away. People do religion and use religion.

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.)

In this episode’s LBLI, Megan talked about how Haudenosaunee folks near Syracuse, NY labeled contaminated waterways for passersby in multiple languages.

Ilyse brought it back to African Diasporic Religions, and wanted to highlight how in South America, the line between “Native” and “Diasporic” isn’t as clear cut as one might imagine.

If you dont know, now you know

(the segment where we get one factoid)

Megan talked about Haudenosaunee & Skanoh peace center. We also talked about how Haudenosaunee have their own passports! They have their own passports, because they’re their own nation!


Homework!

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

Ilyse assigned:

Megan then also assigned:

Nerds of the Week!

Thanks for listening, rating and reviewing. This week’s nerds are: MCressl, Thstyle, & SikhProf. You make our whole day.

it’s still good to be the king(s)!