The Presence and Role of Ancestors in Indigenous Cultures, Euro-American Cultures, and Democratic Intergenerational Dialogue

Abstract

What does it mean for a culture to include, or exclude, ancestors as active members? How do Indigenous cultures and traditions cast light on the role of ancestors? Those are the central questions in this article. It begins by offering a general account of the role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures and traditions. These general comments contextualize specific engagement with the work of the novelist and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko (a Laguna Pueblo author) and also with the philosopher Kyle Whyte (a Potawatomi author). Having acquired from Silko and Whyte a sense for the active, intergenerational role played by ancestors in Indigenous cultures, the article then addresses the place of ancestors in Euro-American cultures and traditions, noting that due to particular forms of Christianity and secularism, Euro-American scholars and popular culture more generally tend to discount the role of ancestors. Yet, the work of Silko and others lend sight to see traces of ancestors in Euro-American cultures. Finally, the article returns to the question: What difference might it make to include or exclude ancestors in Euro-American communities and democracy? The approach in this article is transdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of religious studies (specifically its subfield, philosophy of religion and ethics), Indigenous studies, anthropology, political theory, and literary criticism.

1. Introduction

The study of ancestors is an important topic, but also a neglected one, at least in Western philosophy of religion and in other Western-focused subfields of religious studies. In various ways, Christianity, particularly Protestantism, has informed fundamental perspectives in religious studies about what counts as religion—and what does not. Ancestors are not generally understood as belonging to Western religious traditions and cultures. The same aspects of Christianity that have pushed ancestors out of religious studies have also tended to keep ancestors out of the broader life of Euro-American cultures. In these cultures, ancestors are typically understood as deceased relatives who may be important to locate in private kinship lines or family trees, but not as active members of households and communities. In general, there is little regard for ancestors in Western-focused religious studies and Euro-American cultures.

In this article, I wish to bring attention to the neglected topic of ancestors in Western-focused religious studies, and specifically in Western philosophy of religion (which, for my purposes, includes ethics). But there is another form of neglect that I wish to address: Western philosophy of religion’s lack of attention to Indigenous studies. My own scholarship and teaching are at the intersection of philosophy of religion, Indigenous studies, and environmental humanities. This work often engages with and listens carefully to various Indigenous authors and traditions for the sake of witnessing Indigenous oppression, but also for gaining powerful ecological perspectives and practices that critique settler cultures and offer transformational paths forward. In this article, I will employ a similar approach, but rather than focusing principally on ecological issues, I am mainly addressing this question: What can Indigenous cultures teach Euro-American cultures and democracies about the active role of ancestors? Addressing that question will also cast light on why ancestors do not typically have an active role in Euro-American cultures.

If I were to express my central questions in the broadest terms, I would pose them like this: Who are the members of our communities, those places to which we belong? Who is included, and who is excluded? Are immigrants part of it? Trans people? Are creatures and entities of the more-than-human, for example, non-human animals, plants, trees, and rivers—are they members of our communities? And this, too, the topic of this article: Are ancestors active members of Euro-American communities? Are ancestors members of Euro-American democracies? What difference might it make to include them, or to exclude them?

So, think of my fundamental questions as: What does it mean for a culture to include, or exclude, ancestors as active members? How do Indigenous cultures and traditions cast light on the role of ancestors? I will begin to address this question by offering a general account of the role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures and traditions. These general comments will contextualize my specific engagement with the work of the novelist and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko (a Laguna Pueblo author) and also with the philosopher Kyle Whyte (a Potawatomi author). Having acquired from Silko and Whyte a sense for the active, intergenerational role played by ancestors in Indigenous cultures, I will then address the place of ancestors in Euro-American cultures and traditions, noting that due to particular forms of Christianity and secularism, Euro-American scholars and popular culture more generally tend to discount the role of ancestors. Yet, as we will see, the work of Silko and others lend sight to traces of ancestors in Euro-American cultures. Finally, I will return to my central question: What difference might it make to include or exclude ancestors in Euro-American communities and democracy?

There are many methodological and disciplinary approaches to the topic of ancestors, for example, anthropological, literary and textual, religious studies, and Indigenous studies. In religious studies, much scholarship has been done on Asian and Austronesian cultures and traditions. In Indigenous studies, important work on ancestors has been done by Indigenous scholars studying Indigenous peoples and communities around the world, whereas white settler scholars in Indigenous studies tend to avoid or secularize the topic of ancestors. My approach in this article is transdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of religious studies (specifically its subfield, philosophy of religion and ethics), Indigenous studies, anthropology, political theory, and literary criticism. My approach is necessarily transdisciplinary because my broad topic—the presence and role of ancestors in indigenous cultures, Euro-American cultures, and democratic intergenerational dialogue—requires multiple styles and forms of scholarship.

Indigenous studies and anthropology enable me to craft generalized accounts of the role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures and traditions while also bringing caution regarding the limits of any such generalizations about Indigenous cultures. In light of such caution, the work of the Indigenous authors Kyle Whyte and Leslie Silko provide more focused accounts of Indigenous ancestors. Literary criticism provides the tools to interpret the literary arts of Silko and (and later in the article) Wordsworth, allowing me to listen carefully to their texts for various sociopolitical implications. The distinction between fiction and nonfiction is not salient in my literary interpretations in this article; rather, a greater premium is put on the contrast between authentic and inauthentic, honest and dishonest, liberatory and oppressive. The literary arts of Silko and Wordsworth imaginatively illuminate the everyday reality of actual lived lives as well as actual past and present sources of suffering, injustice, hope, and resistance. Political theory, in this article, enables me to pose fundamental questions about what constitutes distinctively democratic relationships, and how those relationships might include ancestors. Insofar as the seemingly powerless and voiceless—among humans and the more-than-human—are excluded from democratic regard and care, a democracy would seem to neglect its responsibility to include and consider the entire community. What, then, would it mean, for a democratic community to count ancestors among its members? Philosophy of religion (and its subfield, religious ethics) is a style and practice of scholarship that frames the entirety of this article, namely, bringing critical reflection to religious beliefs and practices (including forms of secularism), and investigating their ethical implications. By means of philosophy of religion and religious ethics, I reflect on and compare the status of ancestors in Indigenous cultures and in Euro-American cultures, and I then offer ethical and democratic implications of the comparison.

Finally, on the topic of “scholarly approach” in the humanities, I have noticed that while some scholars work squarely within the traditional boundaries of their disciplines, more and more scholars are asking shared questions, working closely with scholars in different fields, and generating a common language in their various shared pursuits. This later style and approach is my own. Every scholar, of course, is situated in a socio-cultural context. I conduct my research and listen to Indigenous scholarship and voices as the child of Greek immigrants and as a U.S. citizen who is both complicit in, and resistant to, white setter colonialism.

2. Ancestors in Indigenous Cultures and Traditions

Now, before offering some general comments about the nature and role of ancestors in Indigenous traditions, I need to make an important caveat: one dishonors Indigenous peoples by suggesting cultural, Indigenous uniformity when in fact there is vast diversity among Indigenous cultures over time and place (and even within the same time and place).1 It is expressly not my goal to suggest universal uniformity among Indigenous traditions, but instead to explore the active ancestral relationships widespread among Indigenous groups. Some general comments can help to situate my more specific engagement with—that is, my listening to and learning from—Leslie Silko and Kyle Whyte, and I will offer specifics on traditions or caveats when necessary.

The practice of honoring, attending to, and listening to ancestors is widespread among Indigenous groups around the world.2 Ancestors are commonly a central aspect of Indigenous everyday lives and many ceremonies—ceremonies that are in some cases formal and carefully observed, in other cases ad hoc and innovative. Sometimes, these ceremonies pertain to keeping and honoring human remains—a vivid, material connection between past and present. But this should not imply that the ancestors are inert bones, chained to their remains. The ancestors are often active spirits with dynamic agency (Cordell et al. 2010, p. 12). In some cases, the ancestors are quite mobile, and they may be embodied in such forms as rivers or clouds; in other cases, they may be embodied in houses, named places, objects, or as mentioned, in their own remains.3 In any case, the ancestors are active, and while some travel widely, they are usually close to home—home being variously understood as a single dwelling, a village, or a region. Ancestors may also be in close proximity to various spirits, such as those of animals or of the earth and sky, and they often act as intermediaries between humans and these spirits (Cordell et al. 2010, p. 13).

Ancestors, then, are typically active participants in their communities.4 Their material entanglement with humans and the more-than-human entail various reciprocal interactions, where each party seeks to keep their commitments to each other for the sake of honoring the past and working toward a flourishing future. Ancestors provide palpable sources of life, offering comfort, ways of resilience and sovereignty, assisting their people in such public and private hardships as genocide, dispossession, sickness, and heartbreak.5 In turn, living humans have ways to provide modes of comfort and aid to the ancestors—often via rituals and ceremonies. Indigenous ancestors in community embody ethical, reciprocal relationships that are fundamentally intergenerational, linking the present and with the past and even the future. The cultural role and understanding of the ancestors are fundamentally different than in Euro-Americans cultures. In Euro-Americans cultures, ancestors may be honored by expressions of grief at the passing of a beloved family member, or by being placed accurately in a “family tree”—a kinship line—after careful research. Such Euro-American practices, while not to be belittled, are fundamentally private intergenerational practices, and they do not approximate the everyday, public significance of intergenerational relationships among Indigenous ancestors and their communities.

Despite the significance of ancestors in Indigenous cultures, they tend to be neglected or “demythologized” by secular settler scholarship, stigmatized or demonized by settler ideological Christianity, and “spiritualized” by New Age appropriation.6 Yet, in Indigenous cultures, they are a vital, tangible, practical part of life. Like other members of an Indigenous home or community, they sometimes bring trouble but also offer much assistance to Indigenous populations in their struggles against settler oppression and other types of harm. Their forms of support are not limited to what settler culture often refers to as inner spiritual strength and mystical insight. Their support can contribute to personal strength and healing but also to social, economic, and racial justice. Indeed, the ancestors usually work to bring both personal and public healing and justice—and there is often a connection between the two. Indigenous ancestors, then, are not understood as belonging to a separate, otherworldly spiritual dimension but rather are typically considered to be integral members of Indigenous communities. They are active members among living human members and more-than-human presences and members. They belong to a community that is inclusive of the living and the “dead”, of the human and the more-than-human.

When not demonizing Indigenous ancestors, settler cultures typically place the very idea of active ancestors in the category of the “spiritual” or “supernatural”. Yet, the term “spiritual” is potentially problematic because it could suggest a nonmaterial, disembodied sphere (the “spiritual dimension”) that is separate from—even above—the rest of the universe. In addition, the term “supernatural” is potentially problematic because it could suggest a class of beings or events that operate in a fashion contrary to the ways of “the natural world”, that is, contrary to the more-than-human. Settler colonial scholarly responses to Indigenous ancestors is usually to ignore or neglect accounts about the presence and active roles of ancestors, sometimes rendering such accounts as endearing Indigenous memories. Yet, this secularized approach to Indigenous cultures and literature fails to take seriously the vibrant role of the ancestors, missing the close connections between ancestors and such material issues as Indigenous sovereignty, land justice, land stewardship, resilience, and continuance. Whether settler accounts spiritualize ancestors, ignore them, or render them as memories, Indigenous peoples are dishonored when their beliefs and practices are distorted by settler interpretive frameworks.

The idea of active Indigenous ancestors has been, and continues to be, stigmatized or demonized by Christianity supremacist ideological.7 Christianity supremacist ideological vilifies Indigenous belief and practice as forms of idolatry, heathenism, witchcraft, and Satanic worship (all stigmatizing labels in settler contexts). In the academy, especially in nineteenth-century social sciences and in early religious studies, Indigenous beliefs and practices pertaining to ancestors were classified as a form of primitive, savage religion. It was held that Indigenous cultures failed to distinguish between true religion on the one hand and cultural kinship practices that honor the dead on the other (Cannell 2013). Indigenous ancestors became, then, the paradigm of all that is neither modern nor genuinely religious. If they are to fit into Western modernity, they must be labeled as a relic of superstition or else as some ghostly, fictional character. In either case, the ancestors cannot be recognized as active members in reciprocal, intergenerational relations with their fellow members.

To “protect” Indigenous children from primitive or dangerous belief, white settler governments and organizations forcibly removed children from their homes and communities, forbidding them from using their Indigenous languages and participating in cultural practices. The children were subjected to cultural genocide. Despite such suppression and oppression, U.S. Indigenous groups and authors have been courageous and resilient, maintaining dynamic worldviews that honor the special roles of active ancestors.

In this section of the article, I have provided a broad sketch of the active role played by ancestors in Indigenous communities. The purpose of the section is to introduce the reader to the significant and beneficial intergenerational entanglements of Indigenous ancestors with living human and more-than-human communities, and also to refer to the various settler colonial obstacles that would thwart such beneficial intergenerational entanglements. Furthermore, I crafted my broad sketch to provide the appropriate context for the next section, a more specific engagement with two Indigenous authors on the topic of the role of active ancestors.

3. Ancestors in the Writings of Leslie Marmon Silko and Kyle Whyte

Turning now to the Indigenous essayist and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, I wish to attend to her literary arts, for these are powerful witnesses to the role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures, past and present.

Ancestors are salient characters in Silko’s novels and accounts of Indigenous worldviews. As already noted, ancestors are not understood as belonging to a separate spiritual dimension but as integral members of human and more-than-human communities. Indeed, in Silko’s Laguna Pueblo culture, ancestors are part of one’s everyday lives. For example, young children often receive their names before the shrines of the ancestors. Throughout their lives, they honor ancestors in various ways, and in turn, they approach and ask the ancestors for forms of assistance (Ortiz 1972, p. 59). These reciprocal relations underscore intergenerational entanglements between the ancestors and living community members. The needs, challenges, obligations, and perspective of past and present generations dynamically meet, and, in this engagement, there is the making of a new present and future. As the Diné scholar Reid Gómez (2019) writes, “Ancestors work with us”—and here she quotes Karen Barad (2011, p. 150)—in “an ‘ethics of entanglement [that] entails possibilities and obligations for reworking the material effects of the past and the future’” (p. 109).

Now, what might it mean for a novelist to experience intergenerational entanglements with the ancestors? Silko has frequently stated that ancestors are not only a source of inspiration for her authorship but are active conveyors of stories. In her book, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Silko (1996) tells of her great-grandmother, and how when she would get ready to relate stories, she would say, “Go open the door so our esteemed ancestors may bring us the precious gift of their stories” (p. 43). Silko continues, “Two points seem clear: the [ancestor] spirits could be present, and the stories were valuable because they taught us how we were the people we believed we were” (p. 43). In the face of settler colonialism’s various attempts at cultural genocide, intergenerational engagement with the ancestors fortify Indigenous people’s sense of identity and integrity. The ancestors and their stories, then, are of vital importance. They can be the difference between life and death. For this reason, Silko (1986) states, “You don’t have anything/if you don’t have the stories” (p. 2). Silko’s warning is also a message of hope: You have everything (or at least much) if you have the stories—powerful, vital resources for healing, resilience, resistance, and social transformation. In light of this, it makes sense that one of the powerful gifts from the ancestors are “the stories.”8

Indeed, the ancestors and the stories are of such importance, and they are so closely associated, that they at times seem to become one and the same. To quote again from Silko’s (1996) Yellow Woman, “The old folks said the stories themselves had the power to protect us and even to heal us because the stories are alive; the stories are our ancestors. In the very telling of the stories, the spirits of our beloved ancestors and family become present with us” (p. 152; emphasis added). This close connection between stories and ancestors is not surprising. To tell the story is often to conjure the ancestor, the source of the story.

But the ancestors should not be reduced to stories, as if ancestors are merely a quaint reference for inherited stories. Listen to how Silko describes the process of writing of her novel, Almanac of the Dead: “I began to lose control of the novel and to feel that all of the old stories came in, and I felt the presence of spirits… It was taken over… And I began to remember reading about Zora Neale Hurston, … Zora Neale Hurston’s book [Tell My Horse] talks about when the spirits come they ride you, you become their horse… They use you” (Irmer and Schmidt 2000, p. 154). Here, Silko conjures Hurston’s anthropological work on Vodou possession and tells how she herself has been possessed by ancestor spirits that tell her the stories. Once again, we learn that the ancestors and their stories are of vital importance. The ancestors in Silko’s authorship bear directly on such material issues as Indigenous sovereignty, land justice, and resilience. To quote Gómez (2019) again, “Story is where the spirit power resides; story is where the ancestors and the people meet; story is what will return stolen people and stolen lands” (p. 101). There is a pivotal connection, then, among people, ancestors, and the stories, and this connection—this “ethics of entanglement”—unleashes forms of power and understanding for such political endeavors as Indigenous cultural and territorial sovereignty. As the Diné scholar Jennifer Nez Denetdale (2014) has claimed, “placing the ancestors’ teachings within a cultural sovereignty framework acknowledges the connectedness of culture to the political and reveals the links between power and knowledge” (p. 71; emphasis added).

The Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte (2018a) writes of the connection between the knowledge of Indigenous ancestors and the power of Indigenous people to interpret and act in a world of past and present assaults on Indigenous cultural and political sovereignty. He describes an imaginative, intergenerational dialogue between Indigenous ancestors and future descendants that seeks to guide and empower Indigenous peoples in the face of various forms of oppression. This intergenerational dialogue presupposes what Whyte calls spiraling time, namely, “varied experiences of time that we have as participants within living narratives [think, vital stories] involving our ancestors and descendants” (p. 229). Spiraling time is the form of Indigenous temporality that holds, and that is expressed in, the intergenerational dialogue between ancestors and future descendants. Spiraling time is not limited to the Potawatomi or Anishinaabe peoples but rather is a form of temporality found in many Indigenous cultures. Whyte quotes, for example, the Māori scholar, Makere Stewart-Harawira (2005, p. 42), member of the Waitaha ki Te Waipounamu tribe: ‘‘Within Māori ontological and cosmological paradigms it is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future” (p. 229).

As Whyte describes it, intergenerational dialogues between past ancestors and future descendants would address “what actions we or our communities ought to take to respond to the issues and problems that characterize our current situations. The form of philosophizing starts with questions about how ancestral and future generations would interpret the situations that we find ourselves in today” (p. 229). The dialogues would tackle such issues as “how both traditional and newer practices” can advise us how “to have spiritual lives, to have consensual and trusting relationship and political leadership, and the capacity to interact with nonhumans meaningfully” (p. 230).

These intergenerational dialogues would also reveal the present settler colonial state as an Indigenous ancestral dystopia. That is, they would demonstrate how Indigenous peoples are living in what their ancestors would have regarded as a dystopic future. If white settlers were to listen to their ancestors, they would understand that they are living in their ancestors’ fantasy. That is, they live in a United States where Indigenous agency is widely suppressed and where settlers can do what they want without having to worry about Indigenous resistance or diplomacy. In light of this ancestral setters’ fantasy-come-true and of how Indigenous ancestors were exploited by the supposed settler allies of their time, Indigenous intergenerational dialogues would warn Indigenous peoples about today’s “would-be allies” (Whyte 2018a, p. 232). Today’s allies typically fail to acknowledge their ancestral fantasies, and hence they fail to be accountable to the continued legacy of their ancestral fantasies (p. 238). Moreover, settler ally activists and professors overstate the significance of their work as a challenge to settler colonialism (p. 237).9

Whyte’s powerful work on intergenerational dialogue demonstrates how Indigenous ancestors are indeed active participants in Indigenous knowledge—vibrant sources of wisdom, beliefs, and practices. They facilitate an “intergenerational dialogue that unfolds through finding and empowering those protagonists who can inspire and guide us through the ancestral dystopias we continue to endure” (Whyte 2018a, p. 233). To return to Jennifer Nez Denetdale’s (2014) claim, “placing the ancestors’ teachings within a cultural sovereignty framework acknowledges the connectedness of culture to the political and reveals the links between power and knowledge” (p. 71). Indeed, Silko and Whyte vividly illustrate the connection between Indigenous ancestors, knowledge, and power.

In this section, I brought specificity to my argument about the active role of Indigenous ancestors by focusing on two Indigenous authors, Silko and Whyte. Silko describes the process by which ancestors provide vital, life-enhancing stories: stories that assist in the survival and even thriving of Indigenous communities. Whyte describes “intergenerational dialogues” among ancestors, living decedents, and future decedents that provide guidance pertaining to cultural and political action for the sake of present and future justice and flourish. Together, Silko and Whyte limn specific ways that Indigenous ancestral entanglements assist Indigenous communities. This consideration of the beneficial role of Indigenous ancestors prompts the question that drives the following section: What role do ancestors play in Euro-American communities and traditions?

4. Ancestors in Euro-American Communities Traditions, Past and Present

Having discussed the active role of ancestors in Indigenous cultures, I wish now to consider briefly ancestors in Euro-American cultures and traditions, past and present. Silko (1992) warns that “Europeans did not listen to the souls of their dead. That was the root of trouble for Europeans” (p. 604). Silko is suggesting that in the absence of substantive, intergenerational connections, Europeans were separated from a vital relationality to their past and future. Recall the words of the Māori scholar Makere Stewart-Harawira (2005): “It is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future” (p. 42). Stewart-Harawira is discussing Māori culture, but in conjunction with Silko’s claim about Europeans, Stewart-Harawira can now be heard as a warning to Euro-American cultures. Insofar as Euro-Americans tend not to listen to their own ancestors, much less to Indigenous ancestors, they have an impoverished relation to their past, present, and future. Kyle Whyte (2018b), for example, describes how settler climate scientists occasionally draw on Indigenous knowledge to “fill in gaps” in their models that require certain local data, but these same scientists will not find acceptable or useful any traditional Indigenous knowledge that is associated with “ancestral spirits” (pp. 63–64). By excluding the ancestral spirits, settler scientists fail to perceive the very nuanced connections among past, present, and future that can cast light on climate science.

There was a time when Europeans were more receptive to the voices of the ancestors, but particular forms of Christianity suppressed such receptivity. And, as mentioned earlier, religious studies and anthropology—among other academic fields—have tended to secularize the very idea of ancestors, conceiving of ancestors in the West as a matter of private family trees or kinship lines, not as active members in religious communities. In early European cultures when ancestors did have a more vibrant role, Christianity initially accommodated some of those roles. Even today you can see evidence of active ancestors in Christian practice, as for example in some Roman Catholic celebrations of All Souls Day and All Saints Day—both of which have pre-Christian origins (Reuter 2014, p. 223). Yet, for the most part, European-American ancestors were eventually silenced by Roman Catholicism and especially by Protestantism. Such silencing was a painful episode for many Europeans who longed for more connection to their ancestors. Fenella Cannell (2013) notes that during the Reformation “even austerely Protestant clerics had great difficulty in teaching themselves to feel, subjectively, that there was no communication between the living and the dead, whatever their credo demanded they believed and preached” (p. 214). The intergenerational dialogue and exchange that was and is so important to Indigenous cultures was eventually systematically banned by Christianity in Euro-American cultures and beyond. Hence, “the Protestant world rests in part on the attempt to forbid contact between the living and the dead, to deny reciprocity between the living and the dead, and to outlaw any classification of attentions to the dead as ‘religion’” (p. 214).

Nonetheless, European ancestors never were entirely silenced. Silko can still hear them. She heard their voices when writing Almanac of the Dead, and she heard them when writing Gardens in the Dunes: “So going into Gardens in the Dunes, I had a tremendous sense of the presence of the oldest spirit beings right there in Europe, and that lots of Europeans, even the ones that don’t know it, are still part of that. As hard as Christianity tried to wipe it out, and tried to break that connection between the Europeans and the earth, and the plants and the animals… that connection won’t break completely” (Arnold 2000, pp. 166–67). Perhaps due to Silko’s Laguna Pueblo receptivity to ancestors, she can sense the connection—the entanglement—between Europeans and their ancestors. Perhaps her Indigenous interpretive framework may enable some Euro-Americans themselves to view vibrant ancestors in their own cultures, indeed, to view the world afresh: A world that appears to be devoid of spirits and ancestors may now seem wildly populated with such presences. This would entail, among other things, pushing back against Christian and secular narratives that make it difficult to discern the active presence of ancestors in Euro-American cultures, past and present.

As a modest attempt to push back against those narratives, I would like to have us linger with the Romantic poet, William Wordsworth. Ancestors are found in Romanticism, yet secular scholars tend to think of such figures as fictional creations for the sake of “spooky” entertainment. Scholars often assume that with the rise of science and the (supposed) demise of religion, nineteenth-century readers did not actually believe in active ancestors. However, such belief was in fact prevalent, and Romantic literature is teeming with vibrant ancestors, reflecting what is otherwise a submerged landscape of ancestors—submerged due to Christian and secular interpretive frameworks (Noakes 2004, pp. 23–43; Nartonis 2010, pp. 361–73).

Wordsworth’s (2008) haunting poem, “The Thorn”, tells of a mother in a scarlet cloak who for twenty years has been wailing on a mountain top, mourning beside an infant’s grave marked by a thorn bush. At night, one can hear “voices of the dead” (p. 64, l. 174)—the ancestors—and in a pond not far from the grave, one can see the shadow of “A baby and a baby’s face,/And that it looks at you” (p. 65, ll. 228–30). When vigilantes (thinking the woman killed the baby) seek justice with shovels in hand to dig up “the little infant’s bones”, the ground around the grave begins to shake, and the vigilantism stops (p. 64, l. 234). Read from a secular or Christian framework, this poem could be read as an entertaining Gothic, fantasy poem designed to bring both a smile and a bit of fright to the reader. But when read from the perspective of Silko’s worldview, “The Thorn” becomes alive with possibility, including that of the vision and voice of the ancestors, and of quaking land defending the sacred.

In another poem, “We are Seven”, Wordsworth (2008) resisted standard Christian and secular views that radically separate the dead from the living, sequestering the dead to heaven or simply to non-being. The poem narrates a conversation between an adult and an eight-year-old girl about how many siblings are in the girl’s household. When asked by the adult, “How many may you be?” the girl declares, “Seven in all” (p. 83, l. 14–15). But when the adult learns from the girl that “Two of us in the church-yard lie/Beneath the church-yard tree”, the adult responds authoritatively, “If two are in the church-yard laid/Then ye are only five” (p. 84, ll. 31–32, 35–36). But the eight-year-hold girl is as patient as she is unflappable in her repeated avowal, “we are seven.” To support what she takes as a self-evident claim, she notes that she dwells with her buried siblings, knitting with them, eating with them, and singing to them (p. 84, ll. 24, 41, 48, 44). But again, the adult insists: But “two are dead!/Their spirits are in heaven!” you are five (p. 85, ll. 65–66)! To which the girl again replies, “Nay, we are seven!” (p. 85, l. 69).

And so goes the dispute between those who acknowledge the presence of the ancestors and those who deny it. The stance of the adult in the poem is that of conventional Christian doctrine and secular society: The departed are no longer an active part of the family or community. But for the child, the dead remain a presence with the living, or at least her two siblings remain a vital part in her everyday life. Perhaps the child’s counter-cultural perspective is due, in part, to her status as a child. She is yet to be fully trained in the ways of conventional Christianity or secular society, and hence she can still recognize and honor the close presence of her dead siblings: They are but “twelve steps or more from [her] mother’s door”—the ancestors are close to home (p. 84, l. 39). Indigenous cultures understand this, while secular Euro-American cultures are still trying to silence the ancestors and the eight-year-old girl, among others.10 Yet, Silko’s Indigenous interpretive framework enables one to view afresh these poems and the cultures from which they spring. Texts and cultures that once appeared to be—from a secular point of view—devoid of spirits and ancestors may now seem wildly populated with such presences. What might it mean to be more welcoming to them?

In this section, I described the ways that forms of Christianity have attempted to suppress the active presence of ancestors, but I also pursued Silko’s claim that connections to European ancestors still remain. I then exposed, by means of the literary arts of Wordsworth, the otherwise submerged intergenerational relationships between the living and their ancestors in modern European contexts. Having suggested that there remain traces of active ancestors in non-Indigenous societies, and now turn to my fundamental question: What would it mean to include the active role of ancestors into Euro-American democracies?

5. Ancestors and Democratic Intergenerational Dialogue

I now wish to return to my opening question: What might it mean for a culture to include, or exclude, ancestors as vital members? Specifically, what difference might it make to include or exclude ancestors in a democracy? I want to keep in mind Silko’s (1992) comment, “Dead souls are always near us… Europeans did not listen to the souls of their dead. That was the root of trouble for Europeans” (pp. 603–4). If the ancestors are silenced, a democracy will not be able to receive their stories. Yet, without the stories, to quote Silko (1986) again, “you don’t have anything” (p. 2). So, the question is: How do we include ancestors of all kinds as vital members of our communities and democracies? How do we have reciprocal, intergenerational relationships with them? How do we receive their stories?

The first step is to be receptive to active ancestors, recognizing them in other cultures and listening for them in your own. In this regard, Euro-American democracies can learn much from Indigenous cultures. Euro-American democracies will need to ask: What ancestors do Euro-Americans have, and what stories do they bring? Ancestors cannot vote or have direct representation in forms of government. But they can help to guide voting and sociopolitical beliefs and practices. The practice of listening to ancestors would entail something like a critical piety, acknowledging the presence of ancestors, listening to their voices, but not uncritically following them.11 Ancestors are no more or less trustworthy than some of the living who would attempt to wield power by feigning to speak on their behalf, thereby legitimating all kinds of harm. I am suggesting that those who would bring the voices and stories of the ancestors to public debate and conversation should be treated no differently than any other person, religious or nonreligious. All perspectives initially welcomed, none initially privileged. No voice—including the one speaking on behalf the ancestors—is treated as a special case.

This, then, is an example of the manner and ethos for how a democracy like the U.S. can potentially include the active presence of ancestors, whether those ancestors be Indigenous, African, European, Asian, and so on. It is a way to host a truly intergenerational, democratic dialogue that could address, among other things, settler colonialism in the U.S.’s past, present, and future. Perhaps we would hear the voice of settler ancestors who would acknowledge what Kyle Whyte has called their fantasy: the expansion of U.S. territory and the concomitant elimination—culturally, politically, and physically—of Native Americans. It is of the utmost importance that a nation acknowledges all of its ancestors, even those who have perpetuated racial oppression and violence. Acknowledging such ancestors would entail witnessing, grieving, and taking actions that seek to address the cruel harm caused by these ancestors. Of course, a nation must also recognize and honor those ancestors who courageously opposed such historic harms as the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Some European ancestors would no doubt be among these courageous ancestors. However, it would be especially important for the U.S. to listen to and honor the voices of Indigenous ancestors who suffered from and resisted violent settler colonialism. One cannot assume, of course, that Indigenous ancestors would choose to participate in a U.S., intergenerational, democratic dialogue. But if some did, one might hear, among other things, the stories of Indigenous ancestral dystopia, the exploitation and elimination of their peoples and lands. And perhaps one would hear of their Indigenous fantasies, too: dwelling in a land where they experience political and cultural sovereignty, which includes the ability to exercise care for and accountability to the more-than-human.

In any case, we can imagine an intergenerational dialogue between these various and different past ancestors, their present descendants, and even future descendants. In such a truly intergenerational dialogue, critical piety toward the ancestors moves in and interweaves many temporal directions, in what Kyle Whyte has called spiraling time. If we can hear or imagine the voices of future descendants in dialogue with past ancestors and present descendants, such an intergenerational dialogue could bring visions of potential future dystopias but also of ethical change. It may be part of a modest step toward “the radical innovation that decolonisation demands”, for example, the return of land (Maddison 2022, p. 1320). For, as mentioned above, listening to the ancestors must entail witnessing, grieving, and taking specific actions that would endeavor to respond to the ruinous, unjust deeds of the past.

I began this article with a broad sketch of the active role played by ancestors in Indigenous communities. I then brought specificity to my argument about the active role of Indigenous ancestors by focusing on the work of two Indigenous authors, Silko and Whyte. Silko describes how ancestors provide life-enhancing stories; Whyte describes ancestral intergenerational dialogues that offer significant guidance to Indigenous communities. Together, Silko and Whyte demonstrate the beneficial role of ancestors in Indigenous communities. But what of the role of ancestors in Euro-American communities and traditions? The final two sections of this article pursue that question, noting obstacles to the active role of ancestors in Euro-American societies, the continued traces of the ancestors, and finally the promising role that ancestors could play in Euro-American democracies.

Throughout this article, I have endeavored to listen with humility to various Indigenous voices and to offer a window into how ancestors play an active role in Indigenous cultures and how they might play a role in a settler democracy such as the U.S. While my approach has been transdisciplinary, I have mainly drawn from Indigenous studies and religious studies, especially its subfield, philosophy of religion. My hope is that more work in philosophy of religion—which includes religious ethics—can respectfully engage with Indigenous studies. Religious studies in general, but especially philosophy of religion, typically operates within Euro-American biases. While much good work has come from those frameworks, it nonetheless suffers from self-imposed, Western blinkers and limitations. Philosophy of religion needs to be unsettled, and ancestors can be unsettling. That is my hope: that they will unsettle the field of religious studies, its subfield philosophy of religion, and—more importantly—the nation of settlers.12