Search Results (39)

This paper investigates the cultural, spiritual, and ecological use and value of fish by-products in the material practices of Alaska Native (Indigenous Peoples are the descendants of the populations who inhabited a geographical region at the time of colonisation and who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural, and political institutions. In this paper, I use the terms “Indigenous” and “Native” interchangeably. In some countries, one of these terms may be favoured over the other.) and Greenlandic Inuit women. It aims to uncover how fish remnants—skins, bones, bladders, vertebrae, and otoliths—were transformed through tanning, dyeing, and sewing into garments, containers, tools, oils, glues, and adornments, reflecting sustainable systems of knowledge production rooted in Arctic Indigenous lifeways. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods combining Indigenist research, ethnographic records, and sustainability studies, the research contextualises these practices within broader environmental, spiritual, and social frameworks. The findings demonstrate that fish-based technologies were not merely utilitarian but also carried symbolic meanings, linking wearers to ancestral spirits, animal kin, and the marine environment. These traditions persisted even after European contact and the introduction of glass trade beads, reflecting continuity and cultural adaptability. The paper contributes to academic discourse on Indigenous innovation and environmental humanities by offering a culturally grounded model of zero-waste practice and reciprocal ecology. It argues that such ancestral technologies are directly relevant to contemporary sustainability debates in fashion and material design. By documenting these underexamined histories, the study provides valuable insight into Indigenous resilience and offers a critical framework for integrating Indigenous knowledge systems into current sustainability practices. Full article

Obsidian was a key toolstone for the development of maritime lifeways in the western archipelago of southernmost South America. This area is a fragmented landscape where the major north–south movement of people along the Pacific was only possible by navigation because it is constrained by major biogeographic barriers. Two obsidian sources have been recorded, each one located on the extremes of the archipelago, and each has played a key role in the canoe-adapted societies that used them. As indicated by repeated inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analyses, obsidian from Chaitén Volcano to the north was distributed between 38°26′ S and 45°20′ S, and obsidian from Seno Otway to the south was distributed between 50° and 55° S, although it mainly occurred in sites close to the Strait of Magellan and within constrained time periods. This study explores the distribution of these two types of obsidians, their chronology, their frequencies in the archaeological record, the main artifact classes that are represented, and the technological processes in which they were involved. This examination indicates common aspects in the selection of high-quality toolstones for highly mobile maritime groups and discusses the different historical trajectories of two obsidians that appear decoupled across the Holocene. Full article

The Mutanchis, known by their derogatory exonymic term ‘Lepcha’, are autochthonous to Sikkim, India. The name ‘Mutanchi’ derives from the phrase ‘Mutanchi Rumkup Rongkup’, eliciting the response ‘Achulay’, meaning ‘Beloved children of It-bu-mu, who have come from the snowy peaks’. The nomenclature prompts an ontological understanding rooted in the community’s eco-geographical context. Despite possessing a well-developed script categorised within the Tibeto-Burman language family, the Mutanchis remain a largely oral community. Their diminishing, scarcely documented repository of Mutanchi clan narratives underscores this orality. As a Mutanchi, I recognise these narratives as a medium for expressing Indigenous value systems upheld by my community and specific villages. Mutanchi clan narratives embody spiritual and cultural significance, yet their fantastic rationale reveals complex epistemological tensions. Ideally, each Mutanchi clan reveres a chyu (peak), lhep (cave), and doh (lake), which are propitiated annually and on specific occasions. The transmigration of an apil (soul) is tied to these three sacred spatial geographies, unique to each clan. Additionally, clan etiological explanations, situated within natural or supernatural habitats, manifest beliefs, values, and norms rooted in a deep ecology. This article presents an ecosophical study of selected Mutanchi clan narratives from Dzongu, North Sikkim—a region that partially lies within the UNESCO Khangchendzonga Man-Biosphere Reserve. Conducted in close consultation with clan members and in adherence to the ethical protocols, this study examines clans in Dzongu governed by Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in their narratives, highlighting biocentric perspectives that shape Mutanchi lifeways. Full article

This essay serves as an expansive, conceptual anchor and scholarly argument that demonstrates the modality of “reflexive extractivist” religious studies and also orients the Special Issue on Religion in Extractive Zones. We demonstrate that critical religious and theological scholarship have existing tools and methods for deepening the study of extraction in the environmental humanities and related discourses. We make two interconnected arguments: that religion has been and continues to be produced out of extractive zones in the conflicts, negotiations, and strategic alliances of contact zones and that the complex production of sacred and secular in these zones can be fruitfully analyzed as imaginaries and counter-imaginaries of extraction. We present these arguments through a dialogical and critically integrative methodology, in which arguments from theorists across several disciplines are put into conversation and from which our insights emerge. This methodology leads to a final section of the essay that sets a framework for, and invites further dialogical and integrative scholarship on, the practical ethics of non- or counter-extractive academic research, scholarship, and publishing. Offering theoretical, methodological, and practical suggestions, we call for a turn toward reflexive extractivist religious studies, articulate the specific conceptual and methodological approaches linking religion and extraction, and thus set the framework and tone for the Special Issue. Full article

The excavation of residential areas is a growing focus of research in Andean archaeology. Studies reveal that interpreting household remains from some prehispanic societies can be complex because of the nature of abandonment ritual, which may involve burnt offerings, the placement of valuables on floors, or the purposeful destruction of ceramic vessels that are distributed in patterned ways. The goods that constitute these offering practices can be confused with post-occupation refuse, especially when excavation units are relatively small. In this paper, I discuss the importance of assessing site formation processes in residential spaces and illustrate how different modes of household abandonment can make comparative analysis a complex exercise. I describe and compare several examples from Wari-affiliated residences at the sites of Cerro Baúl and Cerro Mejía, located in the department of Moquegua, Peru, to show how ritual depositions corresponding to house abandonment might affect the interpretation of daily domestic life. In particular, I examine how ritual assemblages have been interpreted as evidence of feasting to support propositions regarding the Wari political economy. I advocate that archaeologists interested in domestic areas, lifeways, and the political economy engage in large-scale horizontal excavations to ensure they can correctly distinguish between the remains of quotidian practices, the goods associated with ritual depositions, and refuse resulting from feasting, which is best substantiated with features and facilities to host empowering events. Full article

I explain the early Tamil idea of meyppāṭu as a kind of action, which consists of embodying the spirit, and show how it manifests itself in ordinary emotional experience, in love at first sight, in emoting in theatre, and in spirit possession. The analytical tool I employ is the concept of mūviṭam, or the personaic triad, the central concept in the theory called puttiṇai. Using this tool, I outline the idea of meyppāṭu in the primal community, in the state society, and also in the industrialist state, and show how the understanding of meyppāṭu in the primal world (what I have called viḻuttiṇai) ensured a love-based lifeway necessary for the wellbeing of the people and all the beings other than humans that were also part of that world, and why this understanding is necessary today to end the present Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway, which has brought humans and beings other than humans to the brink of disaster. Full article

This article will use syndemic theory to identify and analyze overlapping health and social conditions, focusing specifically on how gender-based violence is systemically interconnected with contemporary public health issues. The overdose death crisis that continues to afflict Canadian populations is not an isolated health issue. Across Canada, it is intertwined with mental health, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 and structural violence—the chronic and systemic disadvantages affecting those living in poverty and oppressive circumstances. Opioid use is an often-avoidant coping strategy for many experiencing the effects of trauma, relentless fear, pain, ill health and social exclusion. In particular, Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s experiences with opioid addiction are entangled with encounters with gender based-violence, poverty and chronic ailments within structurally imposed processes and stressors shaped by a history of colonialism, ruptured lifeways and Western ways of knowing and doing, leading to disproportionate harms and occurrences of illness. While biomedical models of comorbidity and mortality approach substance misuse, gender-based violence and major infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 as distinct yet compounding realities, this article argues that these conditions are synergistically interrelated via the critical/reflexive lens of syndemic frameworks. Through secondary research using academic, media and policy sources from the past decade in Canada, complemented by prior ethnographic research, the synergistic connections among opioid addiction, gender-based violence and the effects of the COVID pandemic on diverse women will be shown to be driven by socio-structural determinants of health including poverty, intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism and Western optics. Together, they embody a contemporary Canadian syndemic necessitating coordinated responses. Full article

Because Indigenous peoples face unique challenges to their autonomy and lifeways from dominant media influences, Indigenous radio has been used to facilitate intra-community engagement among these groups. A small but long-standing literature reveals both strengths and vulnerabilities of Indigenous radio, though the rapidly changing communications landscape suggests new possibilities for these media sources. Our research was a community–academic collaboration that employed exploratory and mixed (survey, interview, and observational) methods across two Indigenous communities in the Central and Southern Amazon of Ecuador. The Indigenous radio station, La Voz de la CONFENIAE (Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana), sought to perform an impact assessment that would measure both the character and extent of the impact of radio programming with sensitivity to the priorities of listeners as to the purpose, function, and appropriate impact metrics for an Indigenous radio station. A total of 92 surveys and 30 interviews across two communities were conducted in July and August of 2022. Our findings reveal (a) the informational function of this radio for the Indigenous communities in its listening reach; (b) that radio programming conveys family, community, and cultural knowledge bi-directionally both from and to its listening audience; and (c) that members of the audience were, in turn, prompted to action and engagement. In our discussion, we identify opportunities to improve the assessment of community-owned radio as a bidirectional resource for communities. Our work also advances a model of self-determined and stakeholder-driven evaluation for Indigenous community radio, with particular attention to the material (e.g., behavioral) impacts of radio messages and potential for radio to support communal and collective engagements desired by the communities it serves. Full article

This article begins with critical discussion of why parochialism is so alluring, suggesting that we need to understand its tenacious seductions if we really aim to displace, uproot, or transcend it. Arguing that parochialism as a value is not primarily a question of ignorance, but an antipathetic orientation toward incompleteness, interdependency, and entanglement, it then turns briefly to explaining what is meant by creolizing theory. The article closes by offering creolizing’s central insights as a potential antidote to parochialism since they begin with the observation that for any lifeways to meaningfully continue, especially those to which we are most attached, they must be constantly resituated, refashioned, and made new. It ends with a brief meditation on ways to manage anxieties unleashed with radical uncertainty, affirming the depth of the challenges of turning from idolatry. Full article

For at least two decades, lack of knowledge about the Sámi in Norway has been recognised as a reason for the perpetuation of stereotypes and discriminatory acts and hate speech towards them. Education about the Sámi, their lifeways, culture and rights is posited as a means of closing this gap, with the intention of influencing the majority Norwegian society’s attitudes towards the Sámi. The relatively new Norwegian curriculum (LK20) reflects this understanding. It requires teachers at every level of the educational system to include Sámi perspectives and themes in all subjects. This paper looks at how Indigenous Education is included in mainstream schools in Norway. It asks, if Indigenous Education can provide a counterbalance to existing stereotypes and discrimination of the Sámi People, then what kind of knowledge is sufficient to this end? To explore this, I specifically consider the efforts of the Sámi Pathfinders—a group of young Sámi adults (18–25 years) who visit and provide lectures about Sámi history, language and culture for Norwegian high school pupils. Through semi-structured interviews with five Pathfinders, I explored what kind of Indigenous Education they provide, how the Pathfinders interpret their role in relation to combatting stereotypes and discrimination, and their perception of the impact they have. Through reflexive thematic analysis, this study confirmed that there is a lack of knowledge about the Sámi in mainstream education. It also shows that most teachers did not prepare their pupils for the Pathfinders’ visit. Although the Pathfinders’ visit arguably improved pupils’ and teachers’ knowledge about the Sámi, this research suggests that how and how often knowledge is presented matters. It also suggests that who presents knowledge is a factor. Indigenous knowledge that is coupled with contact that is sufficiently close, positive and frequent has greater potential in altering discriminatory tendencies towards the Sámi. Full article

The Eurasian Iron Age Scythians, in all their regional iterations, are known for their lavish burials found in various kinds of tumuli. These tumuli, of varying sizes, are located throughout the Eurasian steppe. Based, at least partially, on the amounts and types of grave goods found within these mounds, the Scythians are usually modeled as militant, patriarchal mobile pastoralists, with rigid social structures. Yet, such interpretations are also due to accounts of Scythian lifeways provided by “classical” societies from the Greeks to the Persians, who saw the Scythians largely as barbarians, much like their neighbors to the north of the Greeks, the “Celts”. Despite recent interrogations of the barbarian trope, and the opportunity to dissect the classic formula of large mounds = elevated status, I contend that many studies on Scythian mortuary practices remain monolithic and under-theorized, especially by Western scholars. Drawing upon different conceptual and methodological frameworks, I present alternative, multi-scalar understandings of Scythian mortuary landscapes. Utilizing a spacetime-oriented, dialogical approach supplemented with geographic information systems, I interrogate how and why various meanings and experiences may have intersected in these protean Scythian landscapes of the dead, rather than reducing them to monolithic symbolic proxies of ideological status. Full article

In developing an Earth-bound homiletics, three homiletical movements are suggested: engaging Scripture, engaging global and local situatedness, and engaging the Indigenous worldview of “all my relations” by tapping into Indigenous knowledge. These three movements need not take place in any chronological order, nor should they be seen as a hierarchy. Rather, they are complementary and interconnected. The author, before articulating these movements, offers reasons for why the topic of the climate crisis is not preached on and then addresses the challenge of selecting biblical texts, delineating the strengths and weaknesses of using the lectionary readings versus a preacher’s individual choices. The article further addresses the danger of biblical literalists who deny global warming. Each homiletical movement will be elaborated using actual sermons as concrete examples of Earth-bound homiletics. Full article

Pastoral nomadic regional confederations, states, and empires have assumed a prominent place in the histories of the Eurasian steppe zone; however, anthropological theory devoted to understanding these political systems is still debated and relatively inchoate. A major question concerns the techniques of political integration that might have brought together dispersed mobile herders under the aegis of these complex, large-scale steppe polities. The first such polity in East Asia, the Xiongnu state (c. 250 BC–150 AD) of Mongolia, has been characterized as a polity built by mobile herders, but in fact the steppe populations of this period followed quite diverse lifeways. Most notably, the establishment of more permanent settlements for craft and agricultural production has complicated the typical narrative of the pastoral nomadic eastern steppe. This study considers ways to conceptualize these interesting variations in lifeway during the Xiongnu period and raises the question of how they might have promoted a novel Xiongnu political order. We analyze transformations within the Egiin Gol valley of northern Mongolia to better understand the organizational, productive, and settlement dynamics and present the first regional landscape perspective on the local transformations incurred by the creation of a Xiongnu agricultural hub. To understand these radical changes with respect to the long-term pastoral nomadic and hunting-gathering traditions of the valley’s inhabitants, Salzman’s flexibility-based model of multiresource pastoralism is of great use. Egiin Gol valley transformations indeed attest to a scale of political economy far beyond the bounds of this local area and suggest an innovative role for indigenous farming in Eurasian steppe polity building. Full article

Intercultural transdisciplinary research reinforces sustainable social-ecological systems in Latin America. Social learning (SL) is a crucial process within this type of research as it fosters collaboration among diverse groups of people, communities of practice, and cultures. Buen vivir (‘well living’), of the popular movements in America, promotes collective responsibility and respect for life. Yeknemilis (‘a good life’) is a value framework of the Masewal people of the Sierra Madre Oriental, Mexico. Members of Tosepan, an organization of the Masewal and other indigenous peoples of this region, reflected on their cultural roots, ways of life, and relations with the territory to strengthen their alternative and self-determined lifeway. Involvement in participatory research within the transdisciplinary process allowed us to focus on the learnings and conditions that foster values and strategies for yeknemilis. Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory activities, we identified five key social learning areas that foster conditions for yeknemilis and life-sustaining relationships in intercultural transdisciplinary collaboration (ITC): collective action agenda, community capacities, intercultural transdisciplinarity, creative reflexivity, and a relational ontology horizon. Finally, we show how the collaborative construction of yeknemilis and social learning practices can be crucial in scaling up collective action toward sustainability. Full article

The Iron Age Saka population of the eastern Eurasian Steppe is considered one of the earliest of the Scythian groups to emerge at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, consequently producing some of the earliest expressions of ‘animal style’ art. Recent excavations of burial mounds (kurgans) in the East Kazakhstan region have provided invaluable data on the depositional contexts of such objects. This paper combines contextual archaeological data and visual analysis with data on the chemical composition and technological production (through X-ray fluorescence and optical microscopy) of some of the gold artefacts from the Eleke Sazy funerary complex in East Kazakhstan. It is demonstrated that the positioning of wearable ornaments within undisturbed archaeological contexts can give vital information about their form and function, while evidence of production techniques and use-wear indicate the time investment and status the objects may have held. It is concluded that the Saka engaged in a complex process of design and execution of their art, depicting many different elements of the natural world. Further research is needed into understanding Saka lifeways and belief systems in relation to large-scale processes of climate change, land use, time, and society from securely dated and well-documented funerary and domestic archaeological contexts. Full article