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RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD BUDDHISM
CHRISTIANITY
CONFUCIANISM
HINDUISM
INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS
ISLAM
JUDAISM
NEW RELIGIONS
SHINTO
SIKHISM
TAOISM
RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS Ann Marie B. Bahr Series Consulting Editor Ann Marie B. Bahr Professor of Religious Studies, South Dakota State University Foreword by
Martin E. Marty
Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago Divinity School
®
FRONTIS: Approximately 300 million people throughout the world are defined as indigenous, or those who lived on their lands prior to the arrival of foreign settlers. This graph displays the breakdown of the six groups of indigenous people covered in this book.
CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS VP, NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Sally Cheney DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION Kim Shinners CREATIVE MANAGER Takeshi Takahashi MANUFACTURING MANAGER Diann Grasse Staff for INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lee Marcott EDITOR Christian Green PRODUCTION EDITOR Noelle Nardone PHOTO EDITOR Sarah Bloom SERIES AND COVER DESIGNER Keith Trego LAYOUT 21st Century Publishing and Communications, Inc. ©2005 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications. All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the United States of America. ®
www.chelseahouse.com First Printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bahr, Ann Marie B. Indigenous religions / Ann Marie Bahr. p. cm.—(Religions of the world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7910-8095-1 (hardcover) 1. Indigenous peoples—Religion. I. Title. II. Series. BL380.B34 2005 299—dc22 2004028260 All links and web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.
CONTENTS Foreword by Martin E. Marty Preface by Ann Marie B. Bahr
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Introduction
vi xi 2
The Adivasis of India
10
African Indigenous Religions
35
Australian Aboriginal Peoples
61
The Inuit People of the Arctic Areas
86
The Mayas
105
The Quechuas
124
Chronology and Timeline
142 150 153 159 167 170
Notes Glossary Bibliography Further Reading Index
Foreword Martin E. Marty
n this very day, like all other days, hundreds of millions of people around the world will turn to religion for various purposes. On the one hand, there are purposes that believers in any or all faiths, as well as unbelievers, might regard as positive and benign. People turn to religion or, better, to their own particular faith, for the experience of healing and to inspire acts of peacemaking. They want to make sense of a world that can all too easily overwhelm them because it so often seems to be meaningless and even absurd. Religion then provides them with beauty, inspires their souls, and impels them to engage in acts of justice and mercy. To be informed citizens of our world, readers have good reason to learn about these features of religions that mean so much to so many. Those who study the faiths do not have to agree with any of them and could not agree with all of them, different as they are. But they need basic knowledge of religions to understand other people and to work out strategies for living with them. On the other hand—and religions always have an “other hand”—believers in any of the faiths, and even unbelievers who are against all of them, will find their fellow humans turning to their religions for purposes that seem to contradict all those positive features. Just as religious people can heal and be healed, they can also kill or be killed in the n