When I teach my anthropology of religion course the first order of business is to define and disrupt “religion” as a category. I begin by having students identify everything they consider to be “religion.” Our list grows and all the usual suspects make their appearance. After the list has been compiled, we then ask what [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·Andrew McKinnon·Buddhism·category of religion·concept of religion·definition of religion·Japan·Jason Josephson·Shinto·Wittgenstein
For historians and theorists of religion, one of the more useful exercises is to compare and contrast the religions of indigenous peoples whose economies or “bases” were different. We are fortunate to have fairly comprehensive records of two such peoples in America: the Iroquois tribes and the Plains Indians. The Iroquois were sedentary horticulturalists whereas [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·alcohol·anthropophagy·blood of Christ·body of Christ·cannibalism·drinking·Iroquois·Jesuits·Maia Conrad·Mohawk·Seneca·social construction·Thomas Abler·visions·William Arens
Having just finished Robert Lowie’s classic Indians of the Plains (1954), I thought it appropriate to comment briefly on chapter six, which is titled “Supernaturalism.”
Lowie begins by noting that Indians did not recognize the physical/metaphysical dichotomy that characterizes Western thought, but they “can and did react vehemently to perceptions that are wholly out of the [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·Apsaroke·Crow·ethnohistory·Indians·Indians of the Plains·Lakota·manitou·maxpe·Plains Indians·Raymond DeMallie·Robert Lowie·Sioux·supernaturalism·wakan·Winnebago
In The Religions of the American Indians, Ake Hultkrantz is clearly interested in reconstructing the supernatural beliefs and practices that the First Americans would have carried with them to the New World. Because Hultkrantz wrote the majority of the book (in Swedish) in 1967 and updated it for the English translation in 1979, the “Clovis [...]
Tags:Adena·Ake Hultkrantz·Amerindians·Bering Land Bridge·Beringia·Clovis first·David Meltzer·diffusion·First Americans·guardian spirit complex·high god concept·Hopewell·Meadowcroft Rock Shelter·Mesopotamia·Mircea Eliade·Mississippian cultures·Monte Verde·Mound Builders·Neolithic Revolution·peopling of americas·Peopling of North America·Piers Vitebsky·Plains Indians·Siberian hunter-gatherers·soul flight·Sumer·Sun Dance·The Religions of the American Indians·Urmonotheismus
For those interested in traditional or historic Native American cosmologies, supernaturalism, rituals, and religions, the most prolific and authoritative researcher is Ake Hultkrantz, the Swedish cultural anthropologist and professor of comparative religions at the University of Stockholm who passed away in 2006.
It has always seemed a bit odd that the primary authority in this vast [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·Amerindians·Arapaho·Arapahoe·comparative religions·cosmogony·cosmology·ethnohistory·ethnology·First Americans·Gifford Lectures·mythology·Native Americans·Natural Theology·religions·rituals·Shoshone·Shoshoni·supenaturalism·Swedish cultural anthropologist·The Religions of the American Indians
