Esposito chapter two “Indigenous Religions”
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Lecture Outline Chapter 2
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Independent
Ethnic
Land-bounded
Individuals negotiate their identity in both modern countries and native groups
Help to understand early religions
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Religion’s origins
100,000 years ago
Artifacts from hunter–gatherer societies
Stories
Axis mundi
Shamanism
Central to understanding origins of religion
View of time as circular
Physiology, biology, and intelligence same in humans now as 30,000 years ago
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Homo religiosus
Religion always been at center of human culture
Past 100,000 years, increasing mastery of tools and development of language
Highly bonded groups of 50
Division of labor
Indigenous peoples rational and highly skilled
By 30,000 BCE humans performing ceremonial burials, indicating belief in afterlife
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Indigenous religious traditions
Group part of everlasting cycle of nature
Group eternal; part of the never-ending group; “collective” identity (not individual identity)
Soul belief
Spiritual bond with each other, animals, plants, the dead
Religion expressed in an embodied engagement with world
World’s ecosystem alive and fertile; part of larger, ordered cosmos
Religion sung, danced, fasted, and tranced by collective group experience
Spirit beings ultimate reality
Ancestors still connected with the living
Dreams and visions represent reality
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Believed that a nonmaterial component lived on after body perished
Function of burial to open a gateway to afterlife
Group symbol, or totem, used for identity, to maintain solidarity in group, to regulate relations with outsiders
Émile Durkheim—“sacred totem”
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Around 30,000 BCE humans acquired capacity to think symbolically; start asking “What if?” questions
Venus figurines related to concerns about birth and survival of children
Female power behind mystery of conception and birth and the miracle of breastfeeding was revered
After 15,000 BCE dead buried in mounds or graves in fetal position, suggesting earth a womb from which resurrection was expected
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Shamanism
Roles far back as 30,000 years ago included healing, dealing with death, traveling to realm of dead
Binds community together in face of crisis
Brings harmony to group when discord
Uses altered state of consciousness or trance to communicate with unseen spirits, gain insight into a situation, intervene on behalf of afflicted party
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Spirits coexist with humans in a layered cosmos
Role universally regarded as mortally dangerous
Train through long apprenticeships
Universal reliance on drumming, dancing, chanting, and fasting to induce trance
Still pivotal figures in societies around world
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Indigenous religions today
Expansion of the West into indigenous cultures
Brought disease, plundering, enslavement
Destroyed and changed ancient religious traditions
No indigenous groups remain today that have not been exposed to outsiders
Some groups successful in assimilating, then integrating modern with indigenous
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Today (continued)
Pan-Americanization of indigenous peoples
Native American Church major example
Similar churches in South America
Shamanism
Remains important in many parts of world, especially Asia
White shamans
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