Vision questing in the New Forest: Indigenous spirituality in the public sphere and the cultural values underlying the Idle No More movement

Abstract

This article considers issues related to Indigenous spirituality in the public sphere. More specifically it examines ways Indigenous people have actively engaged in the electronic public sphere to communicate spiritual teachings and to fulfill kinship responsibilities by utilizing their spiritual gifts to benefit their human and non-human relatives, including the environment, through social action. The author takes the Idle No More movement (INM) as an example of a grass-roots social justice movement that effectively used Facebook as a public platform to create awareness and to mobilize social action. However the spiritual foundation of such social action is often lost in the message. And all social action, including the INM movement, has to be understood in spiritual terms. In this article, the author examines the representations of Indigenous spirituality expressed in the electronic public sphere with a focus on the cultural values underlying the Idle No More Movement.