Belief, ritual and sacred places

Lesson 3 of 5 in "Language and knowledge", about 6 minutes

There is no single indigenous religion. There are thousands of traditions, each belonging to a particular people and place. Many have no name of their own, because they are not separated from the rest of life: farming, healing, law and worship are parts of one whole. Still, some themes come up again and again, and it helps to know the words used for them.

Common themes

• A living world: animals, plants, rivers, mountains and weather are seen as having spirit or personhood.
• Ancestors: the dead remain members of the community and are honoured, consulted and fed.
• Reciprocity: people must give back for what they take, through offerings, restraint and thanks.
• Place: the sacred is found in particular landscapes, not only in buildings.
• Specialists: certain people are trained or called to heal and to deal with the spirit world.

Words you will meet

Animism is a scholar's term for the view that the world is full of beings with spirit, with whom humans have relationships. A totem is an animal, plant or object linked to a clan as its emblem or ancestor. The word comes from Ojibwe, a language of North America. Taboo, a rule that sets something apart as forbidden, comes from the Polynesian word tapu.

A shaman is a person who enters a trance to contact spirits on behalf of others, often to heal. The word comes from the Tungusic languages of Siberia, spoken by peoples such as the Evenki. It has since been applied to healers all over the world, which can blur real differences. Where possible, use the people's own term for their ritual experts.

The Dreaming

Aboriginal Australian peoples describe a creative era in which ancestral beings travelled across the land, forming its hills, rivers and waterholes and laying down the law for people to follow. English speakers call it the Dreaming or Dreamtime, though each language has its own word. It is not only the past. The ancestral power is held to be still present in the land.

Sacred places

Because belief is rooted in landscape, a sacred place cannot be moved or replaced. A mountain where the creator lives is not like a church that can be rebuilt elsewhere. This is why conflicts over mines, dams and roads are so often about religion as well as livelihood, and why offers of compensation or resettlement may miss the point entirely.

• The Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, India, are home to Niyam Raja, the deity of the Dongria Kondh.
• The Black Hills of South Dakota, called Paha Sapa, are sacred to the Lakota.
• Mauna Kea in Hawaii is revered by Native Hawaiians as the meeting point of earth and sky.
• The Whanganui River in New Zealand is regarded by its Māori tribes as an ancestor. In 2017 it was recognised in law as a legal person.

Ritual through the year

Rituals mark the farming and herding calendar. Adivasi communities in Jharkhand celebrate Sarhul in spring, when the sal trees flower, with offerings in the sacred grove. Many peoples hold first-fruit ceremonies before a new crop may be eaten. Andean farmers make offerings to Pachamama, the earth mother, before planting. Such rites express thanks and renew the bond between people, land and ancestors.

Blending and change

Most indigenous people today also belong to a world religion. Large numbers are Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. This rarely means that older beliefs have gone. In Mexico, the Day of the Dead joins Catholic feast days with far older practices of honouring ancestors. In north-east India, some communities have organised their own faiths, such as Donyi-Polo in Arunachal Pradesh, centred on the sun and moon.

Indigenous religions were often suppressed by law. Canada banned the potlatch, a ceremonial feast of the north-west coast peoples, from 1885 to 1951. In the United States, many Native ceremonies were restricted until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. Many rites went underground and have since returned to the open.

Words in this lesson