The below information is derived from the textbook “Psychology Themes & Variations”.
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Article Summary
This chapter provides an overview of Indigenous religious traditions, highlighting their diversity and some common elements, while contrasting them with “world religions”. It emphasizes that each indigenous group has a unique worldview.
Here’s a summary of the key concepts:
- Diversity and Heterodoxy: Indigenous religious traditions are characterised by a wide variety of beliefs and practices, unlike the more uniform doctrines of world religions. There isn’t one single set of features that applies to all indigenous worldviews. The term ‘indigenous religious traditions’ is preferred over ‘indigenous religions’ due to the colonial connotations of the term ‘religion’.
- Common Elements: Despite their diversity, several common elements appear across many traditions:
- Sacred Lands: Ancestral lands and sacred sites are vital, acting as portals to the primordial past and the source of life-force.
- Sacred Knowledge: Access to sacred knowledge is typically gained through initiation or apprenticeship with religious specialists.
- Kinship: Kinship obligations are highly valued and seen as essential for harmony and the people’s relationship with ultimate reality.
- Oral and Performative Transmission: Traditions are passed down through oral narratives and ceremonial performances.
- Respect and Generosity: Emphasis on giving thanks, humility, and respect for all beings.
- Spirits and Deities: Recognition of the sacred powers of spirits and deities, which can be both dangerous and benevolent.
- Responsibility: A shared responsibility to ensure the continuity of the order established in primordial times through ritual.
- Animism and Multi-Perspectivalism: Indigenous traditions often embrace animism, where all beings are seen as animate and intentional, although their perceptions and relationships differ. Shamans often have a multi-perspectival view of the cosmos, able to communicate with other beings.
- Transformational Worldviews: Indigenous worldviews are often transformational, allowing for movement between different forms of being.
- Cycles of Time: Life is understood in terms of short and long cycles, including the cosmos which is also believed to be born, grow old, and regenerate. Some cultures have developed long count calendars marking these cycles.
- Cosmogony and Cosmology: Indigenous cosmologies describe the creation of the world, often involving primordial beings and transformations. The universe is structured with horizontal and vertical layers, each inhabited by different beings. The horizontal layers are often represented with a center that symbolises a source of energy and peripheries, which are the inverse of the center.
- Primordial Times: These times are understood as an epoch where everything was possible and boundaries between different beings were porous.
- Humans and Other Beings: Indigenous worldviews do not place humans at the center of the universe. Humans are one type of being among many, and there are culturally defined relationships between different types of beings.
- Souls: The concept of the person includes multiple souls, which can be connected to the body, ancestors, and specific faculties. Souls are believed to return to the cosmos after death.
- Rituals: Rituals are essential for maintaining cosmic order, healing, and marking important life events. They often involve music, dance, and sacred symbols.
- Religious Specialists: Shamans, priests, diviners, and other religious specialists play a crucial role in mediating between the human and spirit worlds. Shamans gain power through direct experience, while priests rely on esoteric knowledge.
- Ancestors: The connection between ancestors and descendants is vital, with the living responsible for maintaining the order established by their ancestors.
- Eschatology: Indigenous traditions have views about the end of times, both individual death and the end of the world, often with the possibility of regeneration.
- Contact and Change: The arrival of colonising societies has significantly impacted indigenous religious traditions, causing displacement and challenging the continuity of their practices. However, many indigenous peoples are working to revitalise and protect their traditions. Prophet movements have also emerged as responses to colonial oppression.
The chapter also provides a specific example of the creation story of the Baniwa people. This story highlights how the universe was created from a small stone ball and a ‘Universe Child’. The Baniwa account further demonstrates that the “Universe-child” is a self-generating principle, which brings the first generation of living beings into the world. This is an example of the many creation stories that are present in indigenous traditions. The Baniwa also have a concept of the ‘Universe Umbilicus’ which is the connection between this world and the spiritual world which is only accessible to shamans. The chapter also emphasizes the connection of religious traditions and the natural world.
The chapter concludes by noting that indigenous religious traditions embed metaphysical questions in a language and art of the sacred, which is deeply connected to their natural environment. The text also states that while these traditions are concerned with the end of long cycles of time, they also hold a promise of a new world coming into being if the old one is destroyed. The chapter highlights that indigenous prophecies have served as warnings about the consequences of environmental damage and the importance of maintaining their ancestral traditions.