Indigenous Traditions Flashcards
Dimensions of religion
The ritual and practical dimension,
The experimental and emotional dimension, the narrative or mythic dimension, the doctrinal and philosophical dimension, the ethical and legal dimension, the social and institutional dimension, the material dimension
Thinkers in religion
Eliade—tríes to draw cross cultural parallels in religion
Marx— tried to explain religion through economics. Rel is the opium of the people— makes them act with slave mentality and illusion=bad for economy
Freud— trued to explain real through psychoanalysis. He says religion is an illusion— a way for the mind to deal with feelings of fear and helplessness that arise in childhood
Shaman
A ritual specialist —an intermediary between humans and spirit world
Religare vs relegere
Religare—to bind
Relegere—to go over again
“Superstitious”
Biggest enemy of religion
Used to create a us vs them situation
Outsiders of community are superstitious
James Frazer on three stages of cultural evolution
Magic, religion, science
Primitive and indigenous
Problem with primitive— romantic and pejorative. Childlike or not evolved, backwards
Indigenous problem— people groups migrate and evolve over time (conveys that people do not move, have not changed)
Non falsifiable realities
Propositions/beliefs that are impossible to prove true or false
Not non-scientific bc there is a certain aspect of life that can’t be measured, it is a different aspect of dealing with the cosmos, so it is not agreeing or disagreeing with science
Indigenous religion
Refers to the beliefs, experiences, and practices concerning non falsifiable realities of peoples who identify themselves as indigenous and rely on kinsship and location to define their place in the world
Syncretism
The merging of elements from diff cultures
Typical features of ind
Orality
Emphasis on behavior even over doctrine
Connection to specific place that is sacred
Community emphasis
Sense of time as rhythmic
Emphasis on what happens in life than death
Authority structures (elders, chiefs, shamans)
Complementary dualism view of sacred as ongoing process rather than static revelation
Gendered roles
Myth
Meant to convey sacred truth
Cross generational
Usually address ideas of creation
Creation myths
West African dogon—
Amma wants some sort of relationship, transforms itself into a womb and creates new beings called nummo but one of them break a out of the womb and and the tone part becomes the earth amma sacrifices one of the nuns and scatters pieces to purify the earth the two remaining nummo clothe the earth with vegetation. Amma and nummo created 8 being who were in sky but they ate forbidden grain and this were cast to the earth —world is created
Iroquois—sky woman falls eventually landing on a turtle. Muskrat brings up earth. She has daughter who then has twins, but one of them tears out through her armpit and kills her. Her body is used as fertilizer and life is able to be created
Conflict, chaos, disruption, sacrifice, new life—repeated themes
Trickster
Shape shifter, takes form of animal, can change gender, more than human but less than god
Their behavior violates the social order
Not always a bad thing
Sometimes social order needs to be violated in order for order to be established again
Ritual of mythologies
The sun dance and the inyan + piercing of the skin =representing the myth
