Symbolic Substitution in the Indian Shaker Church

Abstract

In the late 1800s a local revitalization movement, the Indian Shaker Church, became an established vehicle for religious expression and social solidarity among Coast Salish Indians. It preserved aboriginal ideas by replacing powerless aboriginal symbols with imported Christian ones and introduced a new concept of solidarity based on ideological community rather than residential community. In the late 1900s the aboriginal religion has been revived with rituals and functions parallel to the Shaker Church. The two systems coexist as alternative or complementary expressions of Indian spirituality. Both persist because they offer individuals opportunity to affiliate with different groups at different times; they embody distinct parts of the Indian historical myth; and they perpetuate comparable but different styles of religious experience.