Indigenous Spirits Research Articles

Rose, Michael (2020), Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland*

This book is a compilation of different stories that explore a common theme: the complex relation between the meto (the indigenous/familiar) and the kase (foreign) modes of life in the enclave of Oecussi, Timor-Leste. Written by anthropologist Michael Rose, the book draws on the author’s experience in the region initially as a United Nations (UN) advisor and later on as a researcher. The meto/kase relationship is discussed in the context of different dynamics at play in the highlands and low...

Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin American Arts by Juan G. Ramos

Reviewed by: Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin American Arts by Juan G. Ramos Katie Anania Ramos, Juan G. Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin American Arts. U of Florida P, 2018. Pp. 266. ISBN 978-1-68340-024-0. Poetry, film, and music all summon revolutionary energy in particular historical moments in distinct ways. In his book Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin America, Juan G. Ramos preserves the heterogeneity of these arts while simultaneously undermining the disciplinary boundaries that separate them. In this ambitious and stimulating volume, Ramos puts forward Jacques Rancière’s theory of aisthesis, or the idea that all sensory perception should be trusted as knowledge, as a way of re-centering the arts within the cultural production of leftism. Ramos’s main argument is that we cannot grasp the networked, interdisciplinary political artworks of the 1960s using traditional epistemes handed down from colonially-driven academic disciplines. Instead, he uses the sensescape as a framework—something that, according to the Argentine semiotician Walter Mignolo and the aforementioned French political theorist Rancière, bypasses the rigid structures of knowledge that are the West’s colonial legacy. Such structures, including Kantian aesthetics, exclude (and discount) the movement-galvanizing, world-changing power of popular entertainment forms like antipoetry, nueva canción, and the New Latin American Cinema. Ramos shows how these art forms created new sensory environments for thinking about what futures were possible. In four sections, Ramos reveals the poetic, filmic, and musical techniques across Latin America that appealed to the senses in order to locate “a certain indigenous spirit” in Latin America that was “the key to a future poetics of liberation” (65). The most commendable aspect of the book is its willingness to combine seeing, hearing, and spoken dialogue into the central axis of a decolonial aesthetic program. Ramos reminds us, rightly, that the sounds, sights, smells, tastes and touches of decolonial movements across Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s were drawn from “other” places and times, such as vernacular cultural forms from these countries’ distant pasts. By focusing on how they were heard and received in the long 1960s, Ramos fashions a method for considering these entertainment forms—many of them meant for popular audiences—without “fall[ing] prey to nostalgia,” as many analyses of the global 1960s tend to do (19). In this sense, several groups stand to benefit [End Page 288] from this book. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students might mine it for methods and bibliography for their own material on postcolonial cultural production, in an effort to expand the canon of Latin American literary and cultural history. Scholars of comparative literature, philosophy, art history, or film studies will find a methodologically adventurous account of popular arts production across Latin America. Broadly, the book also appeals to anyone interested in the history of leftism within Latin American lived experience in the long 1960s. The text is not without problems. The first and most pressing is that, despite the book’s title, Ramos’s prose style frequently neglects the senses. Descriptions of how these poems, songs, or films might have unfolded in the moment are frequently sidelined in favor of quotations of other scholars’ work. While Ramos has done rigorous research to craft an energizing constellation of discourses—a challenge for a text with this kind of interdisciplinary scope—the book often tells rather than shows. Illustrations could also have done significant work in Chapter 3 to demonstrate how nueva canción performances might have been “sensed otherwise” (21), or in Chapter 4, to show how each of his chosen New Latin American films “engage . . . [the] other modes of sensing” that constitute a decolonial aesthetic experience (147). Additionally, Ramos introduces gender alongside other identities and positionalities that were historically de-emphasized and subjugated under colonialism but does not directly set it aside as a framework for many of his analyses. This is surprising given that this book charts important new terrain in analyzing mixed-gender artistic networks of poets, performers, and filmmakers. An example is his discussion of both the musician and artist Violeta Parra and poet Nicanor Parra, who are brother and sister. Violeta Parra’s work in both music and the visual arts...

Alcohol and the Physician – Sri Lankan context

This review focuses on chronic alcoholism in Sri Lanka and its contribution to the increased burden of disease, deaths and health costs. The burden of alcoholism is unquestionably rising in Sri Lanka. The review traces briefly the history of alcohol consumption from early times to the present day. It discusses the demographic characteristics, the pattern of drinking and the types of indigenous spirits. It describes the main clinical disorders relating to the liver, heart, nervous system, pancreas and the role of alcohol in the development of cancer. Lastly, it is the physician’s duty not only to treat the patient but also to devote himself to addressing the problem of alcoholism and related disorders. He has to remain in close contact with the patient and with those in policy making positions.

THE PORTRAYAL OF INDIAN BACKDROP IN RUDYARD KIPLING’S KIM: A DIASPORIC PERSPECTIVE

The diasporic literature helps us in understanding various cultures in a broader perspective. Indian Diasporic writing seems a very significant set-up linking the entire world. The Indian Diaspora has attempted to bring astonishing realities located in the Indian rural culture. The European travelers and the orientalists have revitalized the varied culture of India and enriched the English literature through their literary work. Rudyard Kipling lived in India for some years, hence was fully acquainted with the people and entire way of life in India. Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling, is a remarkable novel which portrays diverse religions of India, its people and culture. The novel represents a multicolored picture of India viewing its indigenous spirit. It focuses on a life of Kim, a boy of Irish descent, who is orphaned and grows up as a native Indian. Taking into consideration the various facets of the novel, it seems that Kipling generates the realistic portrayal of Indian life. He very honestly depicts the indigenous spirit of Indian backdrop through this novel. This beautiful land itself remains the theme of novel.

Indigenous Spirits, Pluralist Sovereignty, and the Aporia of Surinamese Hindu Belonging

ABSTRACTThis paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian spirit owners of the land despite the threat that these rituals pose to ideologies of Hindu exceptionalism and secular state sovereignty. Hindu rites to native spirits emerge from lingering diasporic doubts about whether Hindus possess or are in fact themselves possessed by the Surinamese land. Though Hindus feel compelled by uncertainties about familial safety to appease the land’s sovereign indigenous spirits, to do so risks undermining the three key justifications Hindus give for their presence and influence in Surinamese society: Hindu ethnic ethical distinction, the universality of Hindu tradition, and state-sanctioned legal title to the land. This impasse results in an aporia – the inability to achieve resolution – that expresses the contradictions that arise when the paradoxes of Hindu tradition encounter the coercive logics of secular state sovereignty in a pluralist, post-colonial nation state.

Seas, oceans and cosmologies in Southeast Asia

This article discusses the changing spirit world of maritime communities in Southeast Asia by differentiating ‘oceans’ from ‘seas’ and by linking historical evidence to modern anthropological studies. Since the lives of seagoing peoples are fraught with unpredictability, propitiation of local sea spirits was a traditional means of ensuring good fortune and protection. As long-distance voyages expanded in the early modern period, the global reach of the world religions, extending beyond familiar seas into the more extensive ocean environment, held out particular appeal. Not only were the gods, deities and saints attached to larger religious systems themselves ocean travellers; in contrast to the unpredictability of indigenous spirits, they were always amenable to requests for help, even when the suppliant was far from home waters. At the same time, as world religions were incorporated into indigenous cosmologies, maritime peoples gained greater agency in negotiating relationships with the local spirits that still wield power in Southeast Asian seas.

Family Historiography in The White Earth

ABSTRACTIn recent years, family history research has become a popular activity for many Australians. This imperative to connect with our ancestors extends into the field of literary production. In this essay, we examine one prominent novel that reflects this movement, Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth (2004). Looking through a lens of family history and historiography, the novel asks questions about postcolonial belonging, inheritance, and the violent foundations of the nation. McGahan’s young protagonist, William, stands to inherit a vast but crumbling property on the Darling Downs in Queensland. As William discovers more about the land, he comes into contact with both his own white pastoralist ancestors, and the powerful Indigenous spirits who inhabit secret and sacred spaces in the landscape. We argue that William’s encounter with secret family histories produces the hysteria at the climax of the novel, when the repressed violence of the past returns to haunt the present. Confronted with hidden knowledge, William—and, by proxy, the reader—is called to reconsider inherited histories in light of contemporary historiographies. The move towards knowledge of the family’s origins is a realisation of the complexity of the white Australian relationship to the land and its first inhabitants.

Rivers, Oceans, and Spirits: Water Cosmologies, Gender, and Religious Change in Southeast Asia

AbstractWater in many different forms and contexts is of central significance in Southeast Asia, and these differences are reflected in the vast range of spirits and deities. Despite wide variation, the most obvious distinction is between spirits associated with fresh and salt water. Those linked to water associated with fertility are typically regarded as female and sympathetic to human requests for assistance. By contrast, the spirits who inhabit turbulent river waters and patrol the shorelines may be male, female, or only vaguely gendered. Although they can be capricious and sometimes cruel, they are nonetheless amenable to individual or communal supplication. The same ambiguity is exemplified by the sea spirits, who extend rewards to those they favour but inflict harsh punishments when their anger is aroused. Yet regardless of their nature or the place with which they were associated, the ‘power base’ of indigenous spirits was always locally concentrated. The limitations in their reach help explain the appeal of cosmologies that extended across a much larger area, and even across the entire globe. The accompanying conceptualization of new and benevolent beings is especially evident in the maritime environment. Here human activity is male-dominated, and the male divinities and saints associated with supra-local belief systems might appear to be the natural guardians of mariners. Even so, culturally entrenched ideas of connections between water and maternal care facilitated the adoption of female deities as protectors of ocean-going voyagers.

Perspectives on the use of embryos in research

This paper explores the epistemological divide between mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science, and considers which cultural concepts have relevance when considering the use of embryos in research. We argue that empowerment is a necessary precursor for a dialogue process to be effective and to maintain the cultural dignity and confidence of the participants. Negotiating spaces to share ideas, concepts and values between different knowledge systems is an important exercise that creates opportunities for innovative thinking. The identification of cultural cues and indigenous reference points for considering how knowledge relating to embryo research might be located within a traditional knowledge schema is a necessary type of activity to ensure mātauranga Māori maintains its usefulness for Māori in a changing society while retaining its indigenous spirit and cultural tradition.

Universalising the particular? God and Indigenous spirit beings in East Kimberley

Some Aboriginal discourses in East Kimberley appear to indicate that Indigenous particularities are being universalised by evangelical Christianity. The aim of evangelical Christianity is to bring all peoples under the domain of one God. But counter statements by people of all ages reveal that the Christian universalising project in East Kimberley is an unfinished (and possibly unfinishable) project. Although Indigenous particularities contribute to generational conflict they are not disappearing, while Aboriginal people remain on or near the lands in which their stories are embedded. Locative traditions emphasise genealogical continuities between the living and the dead. Evangelical missionaries, however, direct spirits of the living to heaven and condemn spirits of the dead to follow Satan. One Aboriginal woman has reached a kind of resolution between God and Indigenous spirits: mamu and juwarri (spirits of the dead) are not evil spirits but sinners who will be redeemed in the Last Days.11 In 1989–91, I conducted research in East Kimberley for my doctoral thesis at the Australian National University. During 2002–05, I conducted research in the same region while a research fellow at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Indigenous Spirit and Ghost Folklore of “Settled” Australia

Early European records of indigenous Australian mythology describe the activities of Ancestral Creators and spirits. British colonisation was intense in the southern temperate regions, which became “settled Australia.” Here, Aboriginal mythology has undergone significant transformations in response to major social and cultural changes. Knowledge of Creation myths has declined, although contemporary Aboriginal people have maintained and developed a rich folklore centred on spirits and ghosts. While the Australian anthropological literature acknowledges the important religious dimensions of Creation myths, studies of the secularised folklore of indigenous communities living in rural and urban areas have been largely neglected. This paper investigates the roles of Australian Aboriginal mythology in recent indigenous and non-indigenous cultures within temperate Australia.

爐外之丹——余光中六十年代“現代散文”的歷史意義

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 余光中的“現代散文”在六十年代初異軍突起，革新了散文的寫法。余氏在《剪掉散文的辮子》中提出了“現代散文”在語言方面的條件，但並不足以概括這一組作品的特色。不少論者注意到，余氏在上述作品集中而强烈地表現出一種“中國意識”。本文通過分析“現代散文”語言條件和“中國意識”的關係，指出在當時的社會環境下，余氏作品以嶄新的寫法，觸動了知識分子無奈迴避政治禁忌的隱痛，一定程度上呈現出臺灣文學的本土精神。和語言的革新相比，内容主題的轉變在促進文類的現代化上，似乎有更重要的價值，本文認爲這當是“現代散文”最值得記取的歷史意義。The distinctive modern prose written by YU Kwang-chung strikes the literary circle in the 1960s. Its innovative approach transformed the genre entirely from then on. In his manifesto 剪掉散文的辮子, Yu defines the rhetorical principles for modern prose. These principles, however, do not suffice to summarize the characteristics of his prose in this period. As indicated by several literary critics, a native (Chinese) consciousness is passionately expressed in this group of works. This paper analyses the relationship between the rhetorical principles and the native (Chinese) consciousness in Yu’s prose, as to illustrate how this innovative approach touched the nerve of the intellectuals of his time, whom were then painfully evading the political taboo in reality. In this way, Yu’s prose conspicuously represents the indigenous spirit of Taiwan literature. When compared to the innovation of the rhetoric, it would seem that the invention of theme is more important in the endeavour of modern genre. This paper suggests that the latter contributes a more crucial historical significance of the modern prose.

Blood money: An examination of oral narratives concerning wealth‐giving snakes in the career of Khotso Sethuntsa, with particular focus on their socioeconomic implications*

Summary This article examines the oral narratives concerning the millionaire herbalist Khotso Sethuntsa's purported ownership of wealth‐giving snakes and his career as a seller of these magical serpents, a practice known as uthwala. It is argued that the uthwala narratives featuring Khotso Sethuntsa (hereafter referred to as the Khotso narratives) are shaped by the specific milieu from which they spring. Particular attention is paid to socioeconomic factors in this regard. The Khotso narratives provide a striking illustration of the way in which socioeconomic changes in South African society affected not only the material world but also perceptions of the indigenous spirit world. A number of other significant contextual aspects are taken into consideration, including the effect of Western religion on African belief systems and consequently, on indigenous oral narratives. This study also pays attention to the moral dimension of the Khotso narratives, examining the way in which these accounts can provide a way of passing moral judgement on one particularly wealthy individual who flaunted his wealth in a poverty‐stricken community. The moralising dimension of the Khotso narratives is related to the way in which these stories express some of their narrators’ needs, preoccupations and desires, while serving as a means of realising some of these desires, albeit purely at an imaginative level. Finally, the Khotso narratives offer insights into the nature and function of oral narrative in the South African context.

The Religious Conversion Process Among the Sidāma of North-East Africa

AbstractThis article analyses the conversion process and the experiences of the Sidāma, in being proselytised by Protestant missionaries in an attempt to integrate them into the modernising Ethiopian state. The conversion process is considered in terms of reasons for accepting or rejecting the new religion. A minority of Sidāma are shown to have changed from old beliefs and practices, partly because of the ease of moral reinterpretation and secular incentives, but primarily because of dissatisfaction with reciprocal exchange relations with indigenous spirits and a desire to transcend the finality of death. In advancing this proposition it rejects the possibility of Sidāma beliefs as constituting a closed system of cosmology. Though Islam is also present in the region, for political and economic reasons it has been less attractive to prospective converts than Christianity.

The Religious Conversion Process among the Sidāma of North-East Africa

This article analyses the conversion process and the experiences of the Sidāma, in being proselytised by Protestant missionaries in an attempt to integrate them into the modernising Ethiopian state. The conversion process is considered in terms of reasons for accepting or rejecting the new religion. A minority of Sidāma are shown to have changed from old beliefs and practices, partly because of the ease of moral reinterpretation and secular incentives, but primarily because of dissatisfaction with reciprocal exchange relations with indigenous spirits and a desire to transcend the finality of death. In advancing this proposition it rejects the possibility of Sidāma beliefs as constituting a closed system of cosmology. Though Islam is also present in the region, for political and economic reasons it has been less attractive to prospective converts than Christianity.

ConsumingGeist: Popontology and the Spirit of Capital in Indigenous Australia

n 16 August 1998, several people from Belyuen and I drove to Wadeye (Port Keats) and ran into the ark of a covenant, a building underway aimed at housing an indigenous spirituality. This building has several aspects, modalities, and scales—physical, subjective, textual. It is dispersed across multiple social fields—law, business, and public life—and the purpose it serves goes by several names: cultural tourism, ecotourism. In this essay, I seek to understand the sources and limits of this built environment and its social, subjective, and economic implications for indigenous Australians. David Harvey (1989: 339) has noted that post-Fordist capitalism seems to be dominated by “fiction, fantasy, the immaterial (particularly money), fictitious capital, images, ephemerality”; the stock market and various financial instruments being well cited examples. Herein, I examine a related market—the market in the uncanny, the mystery (rather than the mysterious), the fourfold (morphe) as it operates in northern Australia. I will propose that one of the operations of this market is to hold certain groups of people accountable for manifesting for certain other groups a Heideggerian form (morphe). It will also emerge that the market itself relies upon a complex set of textual mediations generating both an object for and a limit to capital forms of commodification. What might these particular modalities of capital and textuality tell us about the dynamic relation among text, subject, and economic practice at the end of the millennium? More specifically: How do we understand the textual sources of the indigenous Spirit that capital commodifies? Note: I will seek the answer to these questions not in

Hot Meetings and Hard Kraals: African Biblewomen in Transvaal Methodism, 1924-601

AbstractWhereas women's prayer groups are a well-known strength of African Christianity in Southern Africa, the evangelistic and pastoral contribution of individual women who were not clergy wives has been under-appreciated. Echoing models from Victorian London and Indian missions, Methodism in South Africa evolved an authorised, paid form of female lay ministry via middle-aged black Biblewomen sponsored and overseen by white Women's Auxiliary groups. The first appointee in the Transvaal and Swaziland District wrote comparatively full reports of emotionally 'hot' revival meetings. In 'hard' kraals she encountered hostility in the form of patriarchal control of women and an unusual proliferation of rival indigenous spirits. Her successors found male drinking an even greater obstacle to a sympathetic hearing. In urban townships along the Witwatersrand, Biblewomen work was less pioneering and more routinised, providing pastoral support to local churches via sick-visiting and following up lapsed members. From 1945-59, some Biblewomen were trained at Lovedale Bible School. The period after 1960 deserves separate exploration. In 1997, a new start was made with a national, autonomous Biblcwomen ministry, though many women, black and white, regretted severing their personal and organisational links of mutual dependence.