Native religions and cultures of North America / edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sullivan, Lawrence Eugene, 1949-

Series:

Anthropology of the sacred

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of North America--Religion.

Indians of North America.

Indians of North America--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

249 pages : illustrations, 1 map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Continuum, 2000.

Summary:

For more than a century, the sacred has been the subject of study. Associated with the names of Emile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade, religious anthropology, or anthropology of the sacred, today comprises many disciplines: among them, pre-history, cultural history, history of religions, ethnology, sociology, paleoanthropology, and linguistics. It is united in its focus on the human being as the acting subject of the experience of the sacred. Analyzing the terminology of the sacred in cultures around the world, religious anthropology shows how homo religiosus has created distinctive vocabularies suited to the lived experience of the sacred in diverse ecological, historical, and social settings. These vocabularies have disclosed remarkable differences among them but also striking patterns of similarity. They also reveal the deeply religious nature of so many of the key expressions of culture, whether in art, music, performance, life passage, social transformation, or calendrical transition.

Using the perspectives and methods of religious anthropology, Native Religions and Cultures of North America provides a comprehensive summary of the indigenous religions anti cultures of North America. In ten chapters, it describes the modalities or the sacred among the Absaroke/Crow, Mohawk/Iroquois, Creek (Muskogee), Abenaki, Oglala, Navajo, Apache, Inuit, Kwakiutl, and the natives or Northwestern California.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0826410847

OCLC:

42475918