Lakota

Entries Tagged as 'Lakota'

Non-Religious Chimpanzees Cooperate and War for Territory

June 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution of Religion, Ecology of Religion, Economy and Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Neolithic Religions, Power and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Shamans and Shamanism

There have been many articles over the past week reporting that an unusually large group (150 members) of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda has been engaging in systematic territorial expansion by attacking and killing neighboring groups. The Nature article notes that this is “cooperative behavior” and then quotes from the New York Times story:
These [...]

The Millenarian Ghost Dance and Massacre at Wounded Knee

June 21st, 2010 · No Comments · Ecology of Religion, Economy and Religion, History of Religions, Power and Religion, Ritual and Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

To learn more about the Native American Ghost Dance movement and the conflagration at Wounded Knee in 1890, over the weekend I read Rex Alan Smith’s Moon of the Popping Trees: The Tragedy at Wounded Knee and the End of the Indian Wars. Smith has constructed a crisp narrative that will hold your attention.
For those [...]

Agriculture and the Apocalypse

June 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution of Religion, Ecology of Religion, Economy and Religion, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

By my reading of history, the turning (or tipping) point for humanity was the domestication of plants and animals, otherwise known as the Neolithic Revolution. Before this occurred — at different places in the world at different times, beginning approximately 12,000 years ago and largely the dominant mode of production by 5,000 years ago — [...]

The Earliest Moral-Ethical Precepts Were Not Religious

May 16th, 2010 · No Comments · Axial Age Religions, Cultural Evolution of Religion, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Morality and Religion

Because most modern religions are constructed around — and concern themselves with — moral or ethical behavior, the common (and mistaken) assumption is that morality and religion are inextricably linked and have always been linked. This simply is not the case. As I discussed in this post, there are many societies — past and present [...]

Judge Not and Be Persuaded (or Healed)

May 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Cognition and Religion, Emotions and Religion, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Shamans and Shamanism

Over at Inkling Magazine, Meera Lee Sethi reports on a brilliant study which shows that when believers are told that the person to whom they are listening has divine powers, the regions of their brain responsible for high level executive functioning — in other words, the areas involved in critical thinking and judgment — show [...]

Religion and Ratatouille

February 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Classifications of Religion, Definitions of Religion

One of the dilemmas I faced when creating this blog was deciding what to call it. Although I eventually settled on the word “Religion” rather than “Metaphysics,” this decision was not easy. Why?
The concept of “religion” is Western and recent. Simply having a category called “religion” implies there is something — a set of practices, [...]

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Tags:Lakota·Maurice Bloch·Whitehouse

Plastic Shamans and Lakota Reformation

February 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · Economy and Religion

For those interested in the lucrative and ludicrous commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions, I highly recommend Lisa Aldred’s article “Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances,” which you can find here. With a nod to David Harvey and Frederic Jameson, she notes:
In the so-called postmodern culture of late consumer capitalism, a significant number of white [...]

Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion