Movement and Indigenous Religions: A Reconsideration of Mobile Ways of Knowing and Being

Abstract

This special issue brings together leading scholars in the field of Indigenous religions working with Indigenous Peoples from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe on the topics of movement, mobility, pilgrimage, and walking as they intersect with issues of religion and spirituality. Anthropologists and scholars of religion working with various Indigenous Peoples have tended to theorize Indigeneity as denoting a cultural and historic connection to a particular land-base, yet they have not always attended to the full complexity of Indigenous Peoples’ mobile lived realities. We contend that a critical re-examination and revaluing of Indigenous mobile ways of knowing and being serves as one of several steps needed to decolonize the study of religion. Throughout this issue contributors examine various Indigenous discourses, practices, and politics of movement in order to highlight the historic and ongoing importance of mobility for cultivating personhood, maintaining networks of affinity and belonging, fostering political alliances and solidarities, and generating religious meaning.