Indigenous Sacred Ways

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

Comparative Religion Dr. Glen Avantaggio
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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Indigenous Peoples
• 4 of world population
• Also referred to as
• Native People
• First Nations
• Indians
• Tribal Peoples
• Aboriginals

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Obstacles to understanding
• Histories of repression, destruction
• Material, non-spiritual approach
• Oral tradition
• Geographical context

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Comprehensive Life Path
• Tremendous diversity
• Common elements
• Oral traditions
• Cyclical cosmos
• Tied to ancestral land
• Circle of Relationships

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Circle of Relationships
• Relationships with spirit
• Supreme Being
• Other spiritsunseen powers
• Ancestors

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Circle of relationships
• Kinship
• Natural elements and forces
• Mother Earth
• All beings perceived as kin

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Indigenous Sacred Ways

• Circle of Relationships
• Power
• Spiritual energy, mana
• Concentrated in places and persons
• Desirable and dangerous
• Sacred objects
• Taboos and purification

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Spiritual Specialists

• The world of spirit is dangerous
• Requires special training
• Storytellers
• Poets, dancers, chanters
• Perpetuating sacred oral traditions
• Shamans

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Shamans

• What are shamans?
• Healers
• Medicine men and women, jhankri, ojha
• Intermediaries with spirit world

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Shamans

• What do Shamans treat?
• Physical, psychological, spiritual illness
• Soul loss
• Possession

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Shamans

• How do Shamans cure?
• Travel to spirit world
• Acquire power and knowledge
• Spirit helper
• Natural medicine
• Use of extraordinary perception

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Shamans

• How does one become a shaman?
• One does not choose, but is chosen
• Vision or dream
• Overcoming illness
• Near death
• Shamanic initiation

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Community rituals

• Life cycle ritual
• Survival strategies, e.g. rain dance
• Ritual drama
• Purification and spiritual renewal
• Pilgrimages

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Indigenous Traditions in the Modern World

• Challenges for Traditional Cultures
• Contact with dominant culture
• loss of language
• acculturation
• suppression
• Geographic displacement
• Rifts within communities

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Indigenous Traditions in the Modern World

• Adaptation to dominant religions
• Vodou worshippers fused old gods with images of
  Catholic saints to appease European colonists
• Yoruba slaves in Cuba did the same, resulting in
  Santeria