A new perspective on religions and the environment emerges from this collection. The authors, a diverse group of indigenous and non-native scholars and environmental activists, address compelling and urgent questions facing indigenous communities as they struggle with threats to their own sovereignty, increased market and media globalization, and the conservation of endangered bioregions.
Drawing attention to the pressures threatening indigenous peoples and ways of life, this volume describes modes of resistance and regeneration by which communities maintain a spiritual balance with larger cosmological forces while creatively accommodating current environmental, social, economic, and political changes.
Recenzijas
Contributors to the present volume offer myriad examples that demonstrate ways in which the ancient cosmologies of indigenous traditions are understood as a totality of belief, imagination, and sustainable practices describing a community's relationship to the land. There are in indigenous lifeways no sheltered and isolating constructs that separate religion from nature. Some essays explore the implications of this intimate knowing of one's place for policy makers and activists of the world. Several writers pose "liberative" ecological strategies grounded in indigenous epistemologies. Recommended. -- L. De Danaan * Choice * Confronting readers with the awful human and ecological costs borne by indigenous peoples in an age of globalization, this book also celebrates ecological ethnicities and their creative forms of resistance. If you live on this planet, you need to read this book. If you love this planet, you will want to. -- Joel Martin, University of California, Riverside The pressures on indigenous lands and traditions and the commodification of indigenous lands by corporate and government powers are important issues addressed in this volume. The book contains excellent discussions of the continuing exploitation of indigenous peoples in terms of environmental racism as exemplified by the proposed disposal of nuclear wastes on indigenous reservations. It covers ecological, religious, and political issues in a striking way. Brilliant and exemplary! -- David Kinsley, McMaster University The articles found in this volume are articulate in laying out the underlying contestations that are threatening the very existence of indigenous people the world over. They reveal how deep and difficult the struggle for a sustainable way of life is among indigenous peoples of the world. The exploitation of resources, the denial of the legitimacy of indigenous religious worldviews, political marginalization, and the struggle of indigenous peoples to find their voice and cooperative empowerment are all themes central to this volume. -- Lee Irwin, College of Charleston
Preface xi Lawrence E. Sullivan Series Foreword xv Mary Evelyn Tucker John A. Grim Introduction xxxiii John A. Grim Prologue lix Richard Nelson Maps of Indigenous Peoples lxv Fragmented Communities Intellectual Property Rights and the Sacred Balance: Some Spiritual Consequences from the Commercialization of Traditional Resources 3(22) Darrell Addison Posey Contextualizing the Environmental Struggle 25(22) Tom Greaves In the Eye of the Strom: Tribal Peoples of India 47(24) Pradip Prabhu Shoot the Horse to Get the Rider: Religion and Forest Politics in Bentian Borneo 71(32) Stephanie Fried Complex Cosmologies Nature and Culture: Problematic: Concepts for Native Americans 103(22) Jack D. Forbes Local Knowledges, Global Claims: On the Significance of Indigenous Ecologies in Sarawak, East Malaysia 125(34) J. Peter Brosius Is Indigenous Spiritual Ecology Just a New Fad? Reflections on the Historical and Spiritual Ecology of Hawaii 159(16) Leslie E. Sponsel The Road to Heaven: Jakaltek Maya Beliefs, Religion, and the Ecology 175(22) Victor D. Montejo Tapu, Mana, Mauri, Hau, Wairua: A Maori Philosophy of Vitalism and Cosmos 197(28) Manuka Henare Embedded Worldviews The Sacred Egg: Worldview, Ecology, and Development in West Africa 225(24) Ogbu U. Kalu Melanesian Religion, Ecology, and Modernization in Papua New Guinea 249(32) Simeon B. Namunu Interface between Traditional Religion and Ecology among the Igorots 281(22) Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Religion, Ritual, and Agriculture among the Present-Day Nahua of Mesoamerica 303(22) Javier Galicia Silva The Life and Bounty of the Mesoamerican Sacred Mountain 325(26) Maria Elena Bernal-Garcia Calabash Trees and Cacti in the Indegenous Ritual Selection of Environments for Settlement in Colonial Mesoamerica 351(26) Angel Julian Garcia Zambrano Warao Spiritual Ecology 377(34) Werner Wilbert Resistance and Regeneration Hunting, Nature, and Metaphor: Political and Discursive Strategies in James Bay Cree Resistance and Autonomy 411(42) Harvey A. Feit Sovereignty and Swaraj: Adivasi Encounters with Modernity and Majority 453(12) Smitu Kothari Respecting the Land: Religion, Reconciliation, and Romance--An Australian Story 465(20) Diane Bell Kumarangk: The Survival of a Battered People 485(10) Tom Trevorrow Ellen Trevorrow Contemporary Native American Responses to Environmental Threats in Indian Country 495(46) Tirso A. Gonzales Melissa K. Nelson Liberative Ecologies A Guest on the Table: Ecology from the Yupik Eskimo Point of View 541(18) Ann Fienup-Riordan Learning from Ecological Ethnicities: Toward a Plural Political Ecology of Knowledge 559(32) Pramod Parajuli Changing Habits, Changing Habitats: Melanesian Environmental Knowledge 591(28) Marry N. MacDonald Indigenous Education and Ecology: Perspectives of an American Indian Educator 619(20) Gregory Cajete Andean Cosmovision and the Nurturing of Biodiversity 639(32) Julio Valladolid Frederique Apffel-Marglin Select Bibliography 671(42) Notes on Contributors 713(8) Index 721
John A. Grim is Senior Lecturer, Yale Divinity School. Mary N. MacDonald is Professor of History of Religions, Le Moyne College. Pramod Parajuli teaches anthropology, ecology, and social movements at Syracuse University.
