indigenous religion

One of the most challenging and enlightening aspects of my fieldwork among the Adi of Arunachal Pradesh, India, in the far eastern Himalayan foothills, has been considering the concept of ‘indigenous religions’: as a phrase, as a classification, as a rallying point for activism.

The interview conducted by David Robertson from the Religious Studies project with Bjørn Ola Tafjord (University of Tromsø) and Arkotong Longkumer (University of Edinburgh) explores the meanings, challenges and various usages of the increasingly popular notion of Indigenous Religion(s).

That this conference took place at the National University of San Marcos was quite inspiring. This was the first university on the continent with a theology and arts faculty during the second half of the sixteenth century. Now, almost five hundred years later, Peruvian academics still have an interest in studying religion. However, our current perspectives and methodologies are far more diverse, and ever broadening. I remain optimistic that, in the near future, the academic study of religion in Peru will be as widespread and supported as other research areas.

Riddu Riddu has been important for the Sámi population as a meeting place as well as for people who have lost their connection to the Sámi and wish to learn. In his RSP interview, David Gordon Wilson tells us why he started studying spiritualism and shamanism, his relation to shamanism now, and general problems one may face while studying these subjects.

By defining Indigenous Religions as focused primarily on ancestors and as rooted in location, I have restricted the term in a way that then opens up wide permutations of ancestral and localised traditions as they are affected by modernity, globalisation, travel and mass communication, including indigenous people living in diaspora...