Material ReligionPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015921
M. Weatherdon, Seth Schermerhorn
{"title":"Movement and Indigenous Religions: A Reconsideration of Mobile Ways of Knowing and Being","authors":"M. Weatherdon, Seth Schermerhorn","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015921","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This special issue brings together leading scholars in the field of Indigenous religions working with Indigenous Peoples from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe on the topics of movement, mobility, pilgrimage, and walking as they intersect with issues of religion and spirituality. Anthropologists and scholars of religion working with various Indigenous Peoples have tended to theorize Indigeneity as denoting a cultural and historic connection to a particular land-base, yet they have not always attended to the full complexity of Indigenous Peoples’ mobile lived realities. We contend that a critical re-examination and revaluing of Indigenous mobile ways of knowing and being serves as one of several steps needed to decolonize the study of religion. Throughout this issue contributors examine various Indigenous discourses, practices, and politics of movement in order to highlight the historic and ongoing importance of mobility for cultivating personhood, maintaining networks of affinity and belonging, fostering political alliances and solidarities, and generating religious meaning.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"3 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44530600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015927
Natalie Avalos
{"title":"A Veterans’ Talking Circle: Urban Indian Peoplehood and Re-Indigenizing Places","authors":"Natalie Avalos","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015927","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While the boundaries of Indigeneity as a category are generally contested in Indian country, urban spaces provide opportunities for affinity and multiple expressions of Indigenous identity to coexist and even thrive. In Albuquerque, like many major cities, inter-tribal Indian identity centered on grassroots political activity increasingly recognizes Indigeneity as transnational and hemispheric, meaning that Indigenous peoples migrating from other parts of the Americas or around the world contribute to its greater Indigenous diversity (Ramirez 2007). Urban Indians in Albuquerque are composed of multiple peoples from diverse national and tribal identities, however, their points of convergence in the city, such as in ceremonial, sovereignty, and stewardship contexts enables a transnational expression of peoplehood to emerge. Indigenous sovereignty has been theorized as an articulation of peoplehood, defined by scholars as the persistence of a people who share a sacred history, religion, language, and land (Holm, Pearson, and Chavis 2003). In this article, I explore the ways urban Indian peoplehood emerges from the re-Indigenizing praxis of material life, such as talking circles, ceremony, and pottery-making, reflecting the generative culture making Native studies scholars call resurgence (Simpson 2011) and that moves away from essentialist and static definitions of Native identity that rely on blood quantum (Smith 2015).","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"92 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44274600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2018850
M. Weatherdon
{"title":"Walking the Law throughout the Journey of Nishiyuu","authors":"M. Weatherdon","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2018850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2018850","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Indigenous journeys are powerful exercises of law and governance. Presently, these journeys have also become a popular means for revitalizing culture and contesting continued colonialism. The Journey of Nishiyuu was a mass social movement in which a group of Uschiniichisuu, Cree youth, travelled a collective 1600 km by foot from their homes in Whapmagoostui, Québec to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario in order to address a variety of social and environmental issues confronting Indigenous Peoples in Canada during the winter of Idle No More (2012/2013). Drawing on conversational interviews conducted with several walkers, their Elders, and community members who volunteered for the Journey of Nishiyuu, I argue that throughout the Journey the Nishiyuu youth walked the law, by which I mean they inherited their authority to govern and exercised their governance by way of walking the land. While making this argument I consider how spiritual imaginations shape legal landscapes and emphasize the itinerant nature and prevailing persistence of Indigenous legal orders.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"77 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47890178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.2015923
P. Gareau, Jean-Rene Leblanc
{"title":"Pilgrimage as Peoplehood: Indigenous Relations and Self-Determination at Places of Catholic Pilgrimage in Mi’kma’ki and the Métis Homeland","authors":"P. Gareau, Jean-Rene Leblanc","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.2015923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.2015923","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Movement across traditional territory to sacred places has always been central to Indigenous thought, action, and governance. And these places are co-constituted by relations with the Land and Waters, with kin, and with other collective peoples, human and more-than-human. This article examines Indigenous experiences of religion and mobility with regards to places of Catholic pilgrimage in Mi’kma’ki territory and the Métis Homeland. We problematize White possessiveness and the settler colonial project by showing how ideas of religion and sedentism serve as a racializing force in governing Indigenous territories and bodies. We focus instead on Indigenous experiences and understandings of religion and mobility as relational, where (1) movement is about experiencing different relations within storied spaces and places that help familiarize and constitute traditional territory and homelands, and (2) place/places allow for nationhood and peoplehood relations to flourish. This article affirms the self-determination of Indigenous pilgrimage as engendering peoplehood relations.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"18 1","pages":"32 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43916001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1996941
Lydia van Leersum-Bekebrede, M. Oosterbaan, Ronelle Sonnenberg, Jos de Kock, M. Barnard
{"title":"Sounds of Children in Worship: Materiality and Liturgical-Ritual Spaces","authors":"Lydia van Leersum-Bekebrede, M. Oosterbaan, Ronelle Sonnenberg, Jos de Kock, M. Barnard","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.1996941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.1996941","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Bringing together concepts from the fields of material religion and liturgical studies, this article explores how adults and children manage sound-related affordances during worship. The concept of affordances—the possibilities an environment offers a person—is made sensitive to socialization and is related to the concept of liturgical-ritual space. Liturgical-ritual space comes into being through people’s participation in an environment and is therefore defined as a type of lived-in space. The analysis of children’s acoustic participation in two pre-Reformation church buildings shows how sounds made by children contribute to the creation of a liturgical-ritual space. It also brings to light tensions in how adults experience and interpret the sounds that children make. Attention to sound highlights the relationship between people and the material environment and shows that sound matters in Protestant worship with children, not only for the cognitive messages it may convey but for its affective qualities as well.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"557 - 579"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44104899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1996940
Eric Chalfant
{"title":"Printing Infidelity: Watson Heston and the Making of the Impressionable Freethinking Subject, 1873–1900","authors":"Eric Chalfant","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.1996940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.1996940","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Nineteenth-century print media provided a set of metaphors with which American unbelievers began to articulate an understanding of religious infidelity as something permanent. Ink, paper, pencil, and mechanical printing technologies served as symbols for articulating disbelief as something imprinted indelibly on the mind of the reading or viewing subject. Thus, over the course of the nineteenth century, American nonbelievers began discussing infidelity less in terms of something rationally subscribed to and more in terms of something non-rationally imprinted at a young age. At the same time, the late nineteenth century witnessed an increasing emphasis on a militaristic understanding of missionary activity incumbent upon American infidels—a tendency partially enabled by understandings of the cartoon image as a tool suited to the defeat of believers and the creation of young unbelievers.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"603 - 626"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44399664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Material ReligionPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1991117
D. Jethro
{"title":"ASH: Memorializing the 2021 University of Cape Town Library Fire","authors":"D. Jethro","doi":"10.1080/17432200.2021.1991117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2021.1991117","url":null,"abstract":"On Sunday 18 April 2021 a wild fire rushed down from the slopes of Devils Peak into the grounds of the University of Cape Town (UCT) upper campus. Buildings and student housing were at risk. Students and staff were quickly evacuated, fortunately evading fatalities or serious injury. Firefighters quickly arrived on scene. The situation escalated fast. Via social media and chat platforms online, there was increasing concern about the security of UCT Libraries. Soon news began filtering in that library buildings had indeed caught fire. The first onsite video footage began circulating in the late afternoon, showing the worst: thick orange tongues of fire guzzled out of the windows of the Jagger Reading Room. Firefighters directed hoses in a vain attempt to douse flames that roaringly consumed decadesold invaluable collections of books, manuscripts, and archival records. The UCT intellectual community reeled in shock at the loss of the library and archive. Images of the smoky, blackened ruins of the Jagger Library and its African Studies collections appeared in the media the following day (Figure 1). Real and symbolic fires have flickered in the background of an extended period of public debate about higher education and institutional change in South Africa that was often fueled by struggles over UCT’s material cultural heritage, such as with Rhodes Must Fall (see Makhubu 2020). It was therefore a surprising, ironic tragedy in many ways. Unclear sentiments of archival grief, loss, and sadness were cluttered up among material ruins that now also demanded urgent salvage and recovery. In this essay I profile the Salvage and Recovery Project (SRP) implemented by UCT Libraries as a disaster management response. It is vividly depicted in photographs taken by Lerato Maduna, senior photographer in the UCT Communications and Marketing Department, and Health Sciences librarian Dilshaad Brey. Memorialization appears central to working through the layered chaos of ruined archival remains and feelings of loss during that time. Memorialization of disasters like this often follows a pattern of ordered ritual performance directed to recon with tragedy, salvage and sanctify material remains marked by it, and consecrate the site for remembrance by the community of the bereaved. Memorials accompanied the salvage at UCT, but to some extent also encompassed it. It initiated the symbolic process of reordering complicated relationships between notions of archive, cultures of knowledge, race, and access to higher education that the Jagger Library had symbolically contained. The 2021 UCT Library SRP was therefore a process of material recovery that also involved a politics of heritage and the sacred.","PeriodicalId":18273,"journal":{"name":"Material Religion","volume":"17 1","pages":"671 - 677"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49380583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}