Indigenous Ecologies &Religion

Catalog description

This course offers case studies in relationships between indigenous traditions and their environments. Sample cultures may include African foragers, Pacific islanders, tribes of the Amazon rainforests, Mesoamerican farmers, and First Nations communities in North America. The approach is anthropological and historical. Typical themes are the paleohistory of religion; Traditional Ecological Knowledge; gender roles in food systems; relations between medicinal plants, animals, and shamans; adapting to climate change and colonialism; and ways that environments shape rituals and beliefs. These reveal alternatives to western assumptions that distinguish "natural" from "supernatural" and "science" from "religion." Implications for environmental policy will be explored.