W. Y. Evans-Wentz, great Buddhist scholar and translator of such now familiar works as the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and the "Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation," spent his final years in California. There, in the shadow of Cuchama, one of the Earth's holiest mountains, he began to explore the astonishing parallels between the spiritual teaching of America's native peoples and that of the deeply mystical Hindus and Tibetans. "Cuchama and Sacred Mountains," a book completed shortly before his death in 1965, is the fruit of those explorations.
To Cuchama, "Exalted High Place," came the young Cochimi and Yuma boys for initiation into the mystic rites for their people. In solitude they sought and received guidance and wisdom. In this same way, the peoples of ancient Greece, the Hebrews, the early Christians, and the Hindus had found access to inner truth on their own holy mountains: and in this same way must the modern person find the path to inner knowing.
Surveying many of the most Sacred Mountains in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, Evans-Wentz expresses the belief that the secret power of these high places has not passed away but only awaits the coming of a New Age. This new age, in accord with the oldest prophecies of our continent, will be a time of renaissance, the long-waited era of harmony and peace among all peoples.
This renaissance shall be uniquely American, a renewal based on the values so long honored by the Americans before Columbus, and so ruthlessly trampled by the "civilized" Europeans who overran them. No other race of people has been as spiritual in their way of life than the original Americans, notes Evans-Wentz. Perhaps none other has known such martyrdom. Yet the secret greatness of the Indian religion still lives, ancient as the Earth itself, yet ageless in its power to renew.

Individuals of all persuasions have become deeply interested in contemporary Sioux religious practices. These essays by tribal religious leaders, scholars, and other members of the Sioux communities in North and South Dakota deal with the more important questions about Sioux ritual and belief in relation to history, tradition, and the mainstream of American life.

Contents:

(1) "Lakota Belief and Ritual in the Nineteenth Century," by Raymond J. DeMallie;

(2) "Lakota Genesis: The Oral Tradition," by Elaine A. Jahner;

(3) "The Sacred Pipe in Modern Life," by Arval Looking Horse;

(4) "The Lakota Sun Dance: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," by Arthur Amiotte;

(5) "The Establishment of Christianity Among the Sioux," by Vine V. Deloria, Sr.;

(6) "Catholic Mission and the Sioux: A Crisis in the Early Paradigm," by Harvey Markowitz;

(7) "Contemporary Catholic Mission Work Among the Sioux," by Robert Hilbert, S.}.;

(8) "Christian Life Fellowship Church," by Mercy Poor Man;

(9) "Indian Women and the Renaissance of Traditional Religion," by Beatrice Medicine;

(10) "The Contemporary "Yuwipi," "by Thomas H. Lewis, M.D.;

(11) "The Native American Church of Jesus Christ," by Emerson Spider, Sr.;

(12) "Traditional Lakota Religion in Modern Life," by Robert Stead, with an Introduction by Kenneth Oliver; Suggestions for Further Reading; Bibliography.

"Quite an interesting book... " -- Religious StudiesReview

"It is by far superior to anything else on demons wehave seen in the past few years." -- The AmericanRationalist

..". Goodman is to be commended for a stimulatingand wide-reaching treatment of a compelling and much-debated subject." --Journal of Folklore Research

Rich in detail derived from theauthor's fieldwork and the anthropological literature, this work paints a picture ofpossession as one of the usually positive and most widespread of human religiousexperiences. It also details the ritual of exorcism, which is applied when things gowrong.

Anthropological and psychological analysis by Radin Kereny and Jung of the voraciously uninhibited episodes of the Winnebego Trickster cycle.

A fascinating Castaneda-like spiritual journey into the wilderness of Manitoba, where Lynn Andrews meets Agnes Whistling Elk, the Native American "heyoehkah," or shaman, who will change her life.

"Levi-Strauss is a French savant par excellence, a man of extraordinary sensitivity and human wisdom . . . a deliberate stylist with profound convictions and convincing arguments. . . . ["The Raw and the Cooked"] adds yet another chapter to the tireless quest for a scientifically accurate, esthetically viable, and philosophically relevant cultural anthropology. . . . [It is] indispensable reading."--"Natural History "

Studies the culture and religion of the Chamba, Duru, Gula, and Gbaya of Cameroon. Discusses attempts of expatriates and Africans to ask questions, to learn, and to interpret what is important in the lives and traditions of African societies in the light of the Christian Church.

In a study that challenges familiar Western modes of thought, Jacob K. Olupona focuses on one of the most important religious centers in Africa and in the world: the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife in southwest Nigeria. The spread of Yoruba traditions in the African diaspora has come to define the cultural identity of millions of black and white people in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the United States. Seen through the eyes of a native, this first comprehensive study of the spiritual and cultural center of the Yoruba religion tells how the city went from great prominence to near obliteration and then rose again as a contemporary city of gods. Throughout, Olupona corroborates the indispensable linkages between religion, cosmology, migration, and kinship as espoused in the power of royal lineages, hegemonic state structure, gender, and the Yoruba sense of place, offering the fullest portrait to date of this sacred African city.

This study seeks to explain how one group of Native Americans, the Oglala Sioux, has preserved its social and cultural identity despite formidable attempts by the U.S. government to eliminate tribal societies. Treating continuity and change as two aspects of the same phenomenon, it focuses on the nature of the uniquely Oglala values that persist, their modes of cultural expression, and the processes by which they are replicated.

"David F. Aberle's book on Navajo peyotism is by far the most comprehensive and complete of any on a North American tribe, and the Navajo nation is the largest in the United States. He discusses the specific politico-economic context and the crisis in the longtime struggle, and traces in detail the conflict of the traditional and the new religion." Weston La Barre. "A sound, scholarly work which has joined the ranks of anthropological classics since its original 1966 publication." American Indian Quarterly. "The chapters attending to the rituals of Peyotism and the contrast between it and Navaho religion are particularly good, though none of the materials can be faulted. Of import are the chapters explicating the Native American Church, Navaho style, in the theoretical context of social movements." Choice. "Today peyotism is a political as well as a religious issue to the Navaho people....A large part of [this] scholarly and impressive contribution is devoted to this aspect....Aberle has not been content to present ritual divorced from philosophy, and his discussion of the underlying though of peyotists is valuable to the student of religions in general....[His] study of the economic aspects of peyotism is closely detailed, and indeed, this book is one of the few publications which present such material in compact form for any North American Indian group." Science.

In Walking to Magdalena, Seth Schermerhorn explores a question that is central to the interface of religious studies and Native American and indigenous studies: What have Native peoples made of Christianity? By focusing on the annual pilgrimage of the Tohono O'odham to Magdalena in Sonora, Mexico, Schermerhorn examines how these indigenous people of southern Arizona have made Christianity their own. This walk serves as the entry point for larger questions about what the Tohono O'odham have made of Christianity. With scholarly rigor and passionate empathy, Schermerhorn offers a deep understanding of Tohono O'odham Christian traditions as practiced in everyday life and in the words of the O'odham themselves. The author's rich ethnographic description and analyses are also drawn from his experiences accompanying a group of O'odham walkers on their pilgrimage to Saint Francis in Magdalena. For many years scholars have agreed that the journey to Magdalena is the largest and most significant event in the annual cycle of Tohono O'odham Christianity. Never before, however, has it been the subject of sustained scholarly inquiry. Walking to Magdalena offers insight into religious life and expressive culture, relying on extensive field study, videotaped and transcribed oral histories of the O'odham, and archival research. The book illuminates indigenous theories of personhood and place in the everyday life, narratives, songs, and material culture of the Tohono O'odham.

Often seen as ethnically monolithic, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in fact successfully pursued evangelism among diverse communities of indigenous peoples and Black Indians. Christina Dickerson-Cousin tells the little-known story of the AME Church's work in Indian Territory, where African Methodists engaged with people from the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) and Black Indians from various ethnic backgrounds. These converts proved receptive to the historically Black church due to its traditions of self-government and resistance to white hegemony, and its strong support of their interests. The ministers, guided by the vision of a racially and ethnically inclusive Methodist institution, believed their denomination the best option for the marginalized people. Dickerson-Cousin also argues that the religious opportunities opened up by the AME Church throughout the West provided another impetus for Black migration. Insightful and richly detailed, Black Indians and Freedmen illuminates how faith and empathy encouraged the unique interactions between two peoples.

"Searching for Africa in Brazil" is a learned exploration of tradition and change in Afro-Brazilian religions. Focusing on the convergence of anthropologists' and religious leaders' exegeses, Stefania Capone argues that twentieth-century anthropological research contributed to the construction of an ideal Afro-Brazilian religious orthodoxy identified with the Nago (Yoruba) cult in the northeastern state of Bahia. In contrast to other researchers, Capone foregrounds the agency of Candomble leaders. She demonstrates that they successfully imposed their vision of Candomble on anthropologists, reshaping in their own interest narratives of Afro-Brazilian religious practice. The anthropological narratives were then taken as official accounts of religious orthodoxy by many practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil. Capone draws on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro as she demonstrates that there is no pure or orthodox Afro-Brazilian religion.

Challenging the usual interpretations of Afro-Brazilian religions as fixed entities, completely independent of one another, Capone reveals these practices as parts of a unique religious continuum. She does so through an analysis of ritual variations as well as discursive practices. To illuminate the continuum of Afro-Brazilian religious practice and the tensions between exegetic discourses and ritual practices, Capone focuses on the figure of Exu, the sacred African trickster who allows communication between gods and men. Following Exu and his avatars, she discloses the centrality of notions of prestige and power--mystical and religious--in Afro-Brazilian religions. To explain how religious identity is constantly negotiated among social actors, Capone emphasizes the agency of practitioners and their political agendas in the "return to roots," or re-Africanization, movement, an attempt to recover the original purity of a mythical and legitimizing Africa.

Sango in Africa and the African Diaspora is a multidisciplinary, transregional exploration of Sango religious traditions in West Africa and beyond. Sango the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning is a powerful, fearful deity who controls the forces of nature, but has not received the same attention as other Yoruba orishas. This volume considers the spread of polytheistic religious traditions from West Africa, the mythic Sango, the historical Sango, and syncretic traditions of Sango worship. Readers with an interest in the Yoruba and their religious cultures will find a diverse, complex, and comprehensive portrait of Sango worship in Africa and the African world."

SHAMANISM / INDIGENOUS CULTURES"This highly readable book will be valuable to every reader interested in Haitian Vodou, and essential for those who want to make the transition from intellectual knowledge to personal experience of a profound and unfairly neglected religion." --John Michael Greer, author of The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, A World Full of Gods, and The Druidry Handbook The Haitian Vodou Handbook explains how to build respectful relationships with the lwa, the spirits honored in Haitian Vodou, and how to transform the fear that often surrounds the Vodou religion. Until recently, the Haitian practice of Vodou was often identified with devil worship, dark curses, and superstition. Some saw the saint images and the Catholic influences and wrote Vodou off as a "Christian aberration." Others were appalled by the animal sacrifices and the fact that the houngans and mambos charge money for their services. Those who sought Vodou because they believed it could harness "evil" forces were disappointed when their efforts to gain fame, fortune, or endless romance failed and so abandoned their "voodoo fetishes." Those who managed to get the attention of the lwa, often received cosmic retaliation for treating the lwa as attack dogs or genies, which only further cemented Vodou's stereotype as "dangerous." Kenaz Filan, an initiate of the Societe; la Belle Venus, offers extensive background information on the featured lwa, including their mythology and ancestral lineage, as well as specific instructions on how to honor and interact fruitfully with those that make themselves accessible. This advice will be especially useful for the solitary practitioner who doesn't have the personalguidance of a societe available. Filan emphasizes the importance of having a quickened mind that can read the lwa's desires intuitively in order to avoid establishing dogma-based relationships. This working guide to successful interaction with the full Vodou pantheon also presents the role of Vodou in Haitian culture and explores the symbiotic relationship Vodou has maintained with Catholicism. Kenaz Filan (Houngan Coquille du Mer) was initiated into Societe la Belle Venus in New York City in 2003 after ten years of solitary service to the lwa. Filan's articles on Vodou have appeared in newWitch, PanGaia, and Planet magazines and in the pagan community newspaper Widdershins.

Just one generation ago, the Sora tribe in India lived in a world populated by the spirits of their dead, who spoke to them through shamans in trance. Every day, they negotiated their wellbeing in heated arguments or in quiet reflections on their feelings of love, anger, and guilt. Today, young Sora are rejecting the worldview of their ancestors and switching their allegiance to warring sects of fundamentalist Christianity or Hinduism. Communion with ancestors is banned as sacred sites are demolished, female shamans are replaced by male priests, and debate with the dead gives way to prayer to gods. For some, this shift means liberation from jungle spirits through literacy, employment, and democratic politics; others despair for fear of being forgotten after death. How can a society abandon one understanding of reality so suddenly and see the world in a totally different way? Over forty years, anthropologist Piers Vitebsky has shared the lives of shamans, pastors, ancestors, gods, policemen, missionaries, and alphabet worshippers, seeking explanations from social theory, psychoanalysis, and theology. Living without the Dead lays bare today's crisis of indigenous religions and shows how historical reform can bring new fulfillments--but also new torments and uncertainties. Vitebsky explores the loss of the Sora tradition as one for greater humanity: just as we have been losing our wildernesses, so we have been losing a diverse range of cultural and spiritual possibilities, tribe by tribe. From the award-winning author of The Reindeer People, this is a heartbreaking story of cultural change and the extinction of an irreplaceable world, even while new religious forms come into being to take its place.

The earth is my mother, and on her bosom I shall repose.
Attributed to Tecumseh in the early 1800s, this statement is frequently cited to uphold the view, long and widely proclaimed in scholarly and popular literature, that Mother Earth is an ancient and central Native American figure. In this radical and comprehensive rethinking, Sam D. Gill traces the evolution of female earth imagery in North America from the sixteenth century to the present and reveals how the evolution of the current Mother Earth figure was influenced by prevailing European-American imagery of America and the Indians as well as by the rapidly changing Indian identity.
Gill also analyzes the influential role of scholars in creating and establishing the imagery that underlay the recent origins of Mother Earth and, upon reflection, he raises serious questions about the nature of scholarship.
Mother Earth might be modern, stressing the supposed biological ground of native life and its rich mythic tradition, but it hardly frees the native people from their long, lamentable involvement with the white man. For making this point clear, Gill deserves high praise.--Bernard W. Sheehan, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
In one of the finest studies of recent years we have an ambitious attempt to satisfy scholar, Native American, popular reader, and truth.--Thomas McElwain, Western Folklore

"This is a startling, stunning, and fascinating book about the blend of music, religion, and politics in Haitian culture. McAlister's mastery of many different ways of knowing makes this study an endless source of insight, intrigue, and inspiration. "Rara! succeeds magnificently as an exploration into Rara rituals and Haitian music, but it also presents original and generative insights into every aspect of Haiti's past, present, and future."--George Lipsitz, author of "Dangerous Crossroads

"This is a major contribution to the literature on Vodou, Haiti, popular culture, Caribbean culture and music, transnational immigrant practices, and the corpus of black religions in the Americas. It is an extremely well-written, well researched and argued, and highly readable book."--Lawrence H. Mamiya, co-author of "The Black Church in the African American Experience

"This is a smart and thoughtful book by a very talented ethnographer. Anyone interested in Haiti will appreciate the work of Elizabeth McAlister."--Karen Brown, author of "Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn

"A rare in-depth look at an extremely popular, yet often misunderstood phenomenon. With this book and CD, Elizabeth McAlister, an involved observer, makes an incalculable contribution to our musical and cultural literature."--Edwidge Danticat, author of "The Farming of Bones: A Novel

The bones of Pierre Toussaint, the first proposed African-American Catholic saint, were disinterred and spread around in the New World. In his introduction, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith suggests the same is true of the religious practices that peoples of African descent and victims of the Atlantic slave trade brought with them. Fragments of Bone examines the evolution of these religions as they have been adapted and re-contextualized in various New World environments. The essays in Fragments of Bone discuss African religions as forms of resistance and survival in the face of Western cultural hegemony and imperialism. The collection is unique in presenting the voices of scholars primarily outside of the Western tradition, speaking on the issues they, as practitioners, regard as important. Bellegarde-Smith, himself a priest in the Haitian Vodou religion, brings together thirteen contributors from different disciplines, genders, and nationalities. The authors address the creolized African religions beginning with their evolution from Nigeria and Benin to New Orleans, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, and Guyana. The more familiar neo-African religions of Vodou and Santeria are also discussed,

"Two very important books have appeared in 1996: 'Reuben Snake: Your Humble Serpent' and 'One Nation Under God: The Triumph of the Native America Church.' I say they're important because they are designed for the U.S. Government and the American people as an audience. The books are not teaching Indigenous people about peyote; they're documents to voice the concerns of indigenous Nations, to protect those of us who participate in the spirituality of peyote -- as members of the Native American Church or as individuals". (The Native American Press, Ojibwe News)

"One Nation Under God is an essential and informative contribution to Native American studies reading lists". (The Midwest Book Review)

"Reuben Snake's personal testimony on behalf of the sacred peyote is seconded and supported by the chapter 'Voices of the Native American Church, ' which presents a persuasive collection of short, heartfelt testimonials... about the life-affirming teachings of love and respect that are at the heart of the peyote way". (Shaman's Drum)

This book celebrates the endurance of the Native American Church, which now has some 80 chapters throughout the country. Prayer meetings, the sacramental use of peyote, and the significance of various practices and objects are described. Eloquent testimony of Church members from different tribes demonstrates that peyote is not used to obtain "visions" but to heal the body and spirit and to teach righteousness. The authors describe the legal battle to overturn the Supreme Court's Smith decision of 1990, which cited peyote use to deny the Native American Church the First Amendment right to "the free exercise of religion". The American Indian Religious Freedom ActAmendments, passed by Congress in 1994, providing an exemption allowing the use of peyote by the Native American Church, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1997.

Black Elk of the Sioux has been recognized as one of the truly remarkable men of his time in the matter of religious belief and practice. Shortly before his death in August, 1950, when he was the "keeper of the sacred pipe," he said, "It is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe, and through this book in which I shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may come to those peoples who can understand, and understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that we pray to Him continually."

Black Elk was the only qualified priest of the older Oglala Sioux still living when "The Sacred Pipe "was written. This is his book: he gave it orally to Joseph Epes Brown during the latter's eight month's residence on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Black Elk lived. Beginning with the story of White Buffalo Cow Woman's first visit to the Sioux to give them the sacred pip, Black Elk describes and discusses the details and meanings of the seven rites, which were disclosed, one by one, to the Sioux through visions. He takes the reader through the sun dance, the purification rite, the "keeping of the soul," and other rites, showing how the Sioux have come to terms with God and nature and their fellow men through a rare spirit of sacrifice and determination.

The "wakan "Mysteries of the Siouan peoples have been a subject of interest and study by explorers and scholars from the period of earliest contact between whites and Indians in North America, but Black Elk's account is without doubt the most highly developed on this religion and cosmography. "The Sacred Pipe, "published as volume thirty-six in the Civilization of the American Indian Series, will be greeted enthusiastically by students of comparative religion, ethnologists, historians, philosophers, and everyone interested in American Indian life.

In the West we are accustomed to think of religion as centered in the personal quest for salvation or the longing for unchanging Being. Perhaps this is why we have found it so difficult to understand the religions of Africa. These religions are oriented to very different goals: fecundity, prosperity, health, social harmony. These seemingly trivial and specific goals are not the expressions of inauthentic or undeveloped religion, as we tend to think, but of a distinctive and profound spiritual perspective from which, in fact, we may have much to learn. African religions, as this study concludes from its close examination of a number of specific African universes, are religions devoted to the sanctification and constant renewal of life. They are dedicated to Becoming rather than to Being, and seek to sustain a flourishing divine order rather than save the isolated self from it. But these religions do not comfortably express themselves in metaphysical abstractions; instead, they use a ritual idiom more effective than any philosophical disquisition. Ritual Cosmos analyzes the logic and inner meaning of such ritual structures as sacrifice and taboo, harvest festivals and rites of divine kingship, millenary movements, witchcraft, and much else. In the course of the discussion, many of the basic assumptions of the scientists and theologians who have concerned themselves with the role of religion in human society are reexamined; the distinctions often made between the sacred and the secular, or religion and magic, for example, are questioned.