Ritual Kinship Research Articles

Genitivo da tradução

Busca-se neste artigo um deslocamento teórico da tradução dos antropólogos para a tradução dos nativos, destacando neste trânsito diferenças menos nos pontos de partida ou de eventual chegada que nas modalidades de aproximação. O marco etnográfico desta escolha é configurado por imagens de pensamento dos Waiwai, em particular da comunidade de Jatapuzinho (RR), onde realizei minhas pesquisas de campo. Constelações culturais tais como a busca dos Waiwai pelos 'povos não-vistos' (enîhni komo), sua noção de 'alma-olho' (yewru yekatî) ou seus rituais em relação a diferentes animais e seus respectivos 'donos' ou 'donos-de-roupas' (ponoyosomo) constituem elaborações ou ensaios (sem deixar de lado as conotações reflexivas) sobre a tradução. Sua descrição motiva a introdução de conceitos como a 'ressonância', a 'redundância' e a 'repetição' (aquela que gera diferenças) e deixa entrever pautas culturais maiores como o 'rodeio' e a 'impropriedade'. A atenção às variações e oscilações do suposto original através de suas diferentes versões se conecta com posições da atual reflexão interdisciplinar sobre a tradução. Entre elas as idéias de Walter Benjamin em torno da sobrevivência do original através da tradução; os efeitos de transformação através da tradução apontados por Jacques Derrida; e a viabilidade, segundo Talal Asad, de traduções culturais que, avançando por outros registros, transbordam o discurso etnográfico clássico. Estas convergências induzem a questionar em que medida a concepção de tradução está ligada à concepção de relação e em que medida uma pode ser repensada a partir da outra.

Discourse Analysis of the Perceptions of Bereavement and Bereavement rituals of Tshivenda Speaking Women

This article examined the discourses of bereavement and bereavement rituals that inform Tshivenda speaking women's positions within their social structure. The Tshivenda speaking community that participated in this study is located in the Vhembe District of the Limpopo province in South Africa. The study specifically explored the social constructions of bereavement and bereavement rituals with the focus on how discourses shape bereaved women's perceptions, actions and interactions when they are subject to particular positions within the social structure of Tshivenda speaking communities. Six focus groups were conducted with widows to gain their constructions of bereavement rituals in relation to their positions. Participants used language that implicated them as not “normal” and in need of healing, as subordinate and powerless in relationships, as women, wives and mothers. They also spoke in a way that justified their positions as subjected by others and themselves as they belong to a collectivist culture.

A Neglected Rabbinic Parallel to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:34-36)

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) One of most difficult sayings in Sermon on Mount is one about light and body (Matt 6:22-23): (22a) The lamp of body is eye. (22b) If, then, your eye is healthy/good, your whole body will be full of light. (23a) If, however, your eye is sick/evil, your whole body will be dark. (23b) If, therefore, light which is in you is darkness -what darkness!1 The ancient rabbinic parallel that I will present here is a partial one, a loose one. It does not solve exegetical problems of Gospel passage, nor does it challenge main lines of its interpretation offered by NT scholarship-and yet it may help to illuminate origins and nature of imagery in this saying. I In b, Ta'an. 24a we read following story: Once House of Patriarch ordained a fast and no rain fell. Thereupon Oshaiah Younger, a colleague of scholars, taught them: If it was done unwittingly, being hidden from eyes of assembly . (Num 15:24)-this can be compared to a bride who lives in her father's home. As long as her eyes are attractive, her body requires no examination; should, however, her eyes be illshaped, then her body requires examination. Thereupon servants (of Patriarch) came, put a scarf around his neck and started choking him. The people of city cried out: Leave him alone; he insults us also, but since we see that whatever he does is for sake of Heaven, we say nothing to him and we leave him alone-so you too leave him alone.2 The story reports an incident that happened, apparently, in Palestine. The identity of Oshaiah cannot be established with certainty; it is very likely, however, that he lived in third century C.E.3 Communal fasts, along with prayers and related rituals, were regularly held in times of drought, in order to urge heavens to give rain.4 Oshaiah makes a biting remark on failed efforts of Jewish patriarch's people (or of patriarch, Nasi, himself) to bring rain, effectively saying that the fish rots from head.5 The incident must be understood against backdrop of decline of patriarchal authority and growing tensions between patriarchal circles and sages.6 An important piece of information gets lost in translation, almost unavoidably. Oshaiah's saying is introduced by technical term ... (he taught), apparently indicating that all of what he says is a citation of an older, tannaitic source. In other words, his remark is presented as a tradition formulated in, or coming from, first-second centuries C.E. approximately.7 Some chronological uncertainties notwithstanding, I see no reason, textual or other, to doubt basic historicity of story or tannaitic origins of homily and-in particular-of bride maxim.8 It is not so much historical setting of Oshaiah's dictum that concerns us here as simile he used. It is based on notion of eyes as primary markers of one's physical condition-as far as a bride is concerned. This notion can be properly seen as a physiognomic one. One has to bear in mind that, in ancient Jewish marriage law, certain bodily defects of woman, unknown to husband at time of betrothal or marriage, had major legal implications.9 The checking of certain bodily traits prior to marriage-by third parties-is mentioned in early sources. M. Ketub. 7:8 discusses preconditions necessary for bridegroom/husband to make claims related to bodily defects of bride/wife: The sages, however, say, that (such claims can be made) only in case of defects on hidden (parts of body); but in case of defects on exposed (parts of body), he can not make claims. And if there is a bath-house in that town, he can not make claims even about hidden defects, since he (is assumed to have had) examined her by his women relatives. …

The Importance of Initiatory Ordeals: Kinship and Politics in an Inca Narrative

Among all the Inca sovereigns whose memory had been preserved by the Spanish chroniclers, Yahuar Huacac holds a unique position. He is famed for having shed tears of blood as a child when a foreign lord kidnapped and maltreated him. Surprisingly, his sufferings ended with matrimonial alliances binding the Inca and the main actors of this drama, all important figures of three foreign chiefdoms. Through both a historical and an anthropological approach, this article analyzes the narrative's structure of interwoven ritual events and kinship patterns. It examines how the stages of the heir's journey over many territories forged a distinctive relationship between the Inca elite and the provincial lords, enlightening the meaning of the final unions.

‘Burying the dead’: making Muslim space in Britain

Astract This article explores how far, and to what extent, burial has contributed to the establishment of a Muslim presence in Britain over the past 200 years. By discussing various ways in which Muslims have buried their dead over this period, and some of the problems that they have encountered, it addresses the significance of ritual and place-making in relation to notions of belonging and the construction of identity. In many ways, burial grounds for Muslims in Britain have operated as symbolic devices for community narratives and shared values, which in turn have nurtured forms of identification with place and community. As this article argues, they have helped to create space that demonstrates the changing nature of Muslim ‘rootedness’ within the British environment.

Sit, Cook, Eat, Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)

ABSTRACT The Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.

Blurred Edges, Open Boundaries: The Long-Term Development of a Peasant Community in Rural Mexico

Wolf's dichotomy between open and closed corporate communities has become axiomatic for the study of social organization in rural communities in Mesoamerica. In this paper I argue that this dichotomy is of limited use for understanding the vital dynamics behind the evolution of social groups typically classified by anthropologists as peasants. To overcome the conceptual limitation of Wolf's original classification I propose a network model that focuses on social relations. This approach can more adequately capture the variability and complexity we observe in everyday practice in rural communities in past and contemporary times. The paper examines aspects of the social organization of Belén, a rural community in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Using data from parish registers and two ethnographic surveys, I demonstrate how the social networks of compadrazgo (ritual kinship) and marriage can be reconstructed back into the seventeenth century. Since the beginning of the eighteenth century Beléños have formed most of their compadrazgo relationships with people from outside, indicating that social boundaries had started to collapse long before industrialization led to new economic relationships. The driving force behind the change was a severe epidemic shock. These findings have substantial, theoretical implications for the model of peasant society commonly applied in Mesoamerica, especially for earlier historical periods.

Traditional and Posttraditional: A Study of Agricultural Rituals in Relation to Technological Complexity among Rice Producers in Two Zones of West Bengal, India

India, one of the largest countries in Asia, is predominantly an agricultural country, with practically two-thirds of its territory lying in the agrarian sector. According to the 2001 census, 74 percent of the population lives in the rural areas and more than 65 percent of the population is primarily dependent on cultivation (Census of India 2001). This fact highlights the central role that agriculture plays in Indian society and culture especially that of rice cultivation. This is easily demonstrated in rural West Bengal, a state in eastern India, where majority of its farming villages grow rice as their main crop. Rice is the main staple food of West Bengal—thus, it also permeates the material, social, and cultural spheres of Bengali culture, forming a trait complex in Bengali society (Bose 1953). Various cultural norms and values formed around rice and its cultivation because of its role in religious attainment and spiritual liberation and became the ubiquitous symbol for Bengali cultural expression. The present paper aims to document the impact of the adoption of agricultural technologies on the traditional agricultural and cultural practices of farmers in four West Bengal villages. This relationship is developed in two ways: first, by discussing the level of technological complexity in the villages; second, by discussing the impact of the various levels of technology adoption on the different agricultural rituals in the four villages.

As muitas faces do compadrio de escravos: o caso da Freguesia de São José dos Pinhais (PR), na passagem do século XVIII para o XIX

O cruzamento de registros paroquiais (batismo, casamento e óbito) com censos domiciliares e com a genealogia de uma família senhorial permite aprofundar discussões tradicionais na historiografia, acerca das alianças de parentesco ritual efetuadas por escravos. Este artigo sugere que as relações de compadrio dos cativos de São José dos Pinhais (PR) eram mecanismo de manutenção e de ampliação de uma comunidade de negros e pardos, e mesmo de brancos pobres. No entanto, o predomínio de pequenos proprietários de escravos tornou o compadrio estratégico também na busca de proteção social, por parte dos escravos, e instrumento de controle senhorial. Tais características acabaram por reforçar o componente de dominação/submissão e ajudaram a debilitar o caráter igualitário que o parentesco espiritual tridentino também pressupunha, contribuindo para a reprodução da hierarquia social.

Reviving Julia Peterkin as a Trickster Writer

Southern writer Julia Mood Peterkin (1880-1961) preserves a distinct insular American community in her novels as she chronicles the lives of rural South Carolinian African American farmers known as Gullah. During the 1920s and 1930s, her work was highly acclaimed and extremely controversial because it crossed sensitive racial borders; however, in recent decades, Peterkin's fiction has been neglected because she was an AngloAmerican writing of a rural Afro-American community, concentrating on folk life. Until now the terms regionalist and primitivist have diminished Peterkin's reputation and damaged chances for a revival of her important literary works. However, when viewed in the context of trickster literary theory, Peterkin's fiction secures a legitimate and unique place in American literary history due to its revolutionary depiction of African Americans. During her twelve-year career, Peterkin produced four novels: Green Thursday (1924), Black April (1927), Pulitzer Prize-winner Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), and Bright Skin (1932). Additionally, she authored A Plantation Christmas (1935), and numerous articles, short stories, and literary reviews. Her collaboration with photographer Doris Ulmann resulted in Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933), a rare collector's item currently fetching over $6,500 US for a first edition, jacketed trade issue and up to $50,000 US for a deluxe edition. Each of the 350 signed, numbered deluxe copies includes ninety copperplate photogravures of Gullah residents from Peterkin's plantation depicting various customs and practices that, like basketmaking, can be linked to West and Central Africa, such as river baptism, grave ornamentation and carrying heavy loads on top of the head (Collins 55). The fine designed type, handmade wove paper and binding materials, and photogravure prints account for its desirability and soaring value (Jacobs 131). For a woman with no literary connections, who began writing at age forty from a rural farm in an era with few technological conveniences, her accomplishments are impressive. Reversing earlier literary trends, Peterkin avoids working out the sticky issue of racism by portraying complex, diverse characters of African heritage in an insular Gullah community without AngloAmerican presence. She once wrote, I mean to present these [black] people in a patient struggle with fate, and not in any race conflict at all (qtd. in Robeson 785). During her career, she successfully presented American cultural diversity to white, middle-class Americans, sans the moonlight and magnolia sentimentality or stereotypical racial caricatures previous Southern writers used to sugarcoat issues such as class, race, and gender. Speaking through an improvised spelling of Gullah dialect, Peterkin offers a rare literary example of the master using the slave's language. She is one of the earliest and most successful Anglo-American writers to cross racial borders by writing from the minority perspective, particularly Gullah. Peterkin created a fictional setting, Blue Brook Plantation, basing her narratives on the intimate life stories of Gullah servants living on her husband's farm, Lang Syne Plantation, during the 1920s. Susan Williams describes the Gullah culture as remote settlements of black people who no longer seemed bound by the ritual relationships of paternalism (Devil 17). The area where Gullah culture thrived, also known as the Sea Islands, extends 200 miles from northeast of Charleston, South Carolina to south of Brunswick, Georgia ... surrounded by tidal swamps [that] sometimes extend 50 miles inland (Smith 289). Because Gullah slave descendants were geographically isolated, they were able to retain aspects of African culture in their creolized community; therefore, Peterkin's record of Gullah culture is invaluable to American cultural studies. Authors may be considered trickster writers if their lives and work cross cultural boundaries and confuse the distinctions set by the presiding dominant institutions. …

The power of AIDS: kinship, mobility and the valuing of social and ritual relationships in Tanzania

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has become a test case of the effects of globalisation, in that it demonstrates how international processes may affect regional life situations and how 'the local' can simultaneously develop in its own way, through the processes of appropriating, modifying, and resisting global influences. Drawing on fieldwork in Tanzania, I show how the Luo in the Mara region define HIV/AIDS as an outcome of modernity and globalisation, which to them have become embodied in processes of migration, the collapse of generational and gender hierarchies, and an increased immorality in contemporary society. While social and moral ruptures in Mara become further condensed in tensions between lineages and AIDS-sick relatives, mourning and burial rituals (including widow cleansing), disputes over inheritance rights, and the attribution of illness to the breaking of a taboo (chira) have become essential for negotiating and maintaining social and cultural relationships in an era of AIDS. In conclusion I argue that the concepts of vitality and moral practice may assist an understanding of how different social actors in sub-Saharan Africa have responded to the breakdowns associated with increased suffering and death, and to describe some social and moral developments observable in the context of internationally driven public health campaigns in the region.

‘<i>Cui multum datum est</i>...’ La confraternita dei Bianchi di Fosdinovo (Toscana, Italia) tra XV e XVII secolo

This article is a brief history and overview of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Annunciation (Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata) in Fosdinovo, a small town in the Lunigiana region in north-western Tuscany. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century the town’s history was closely connected with the Malaspina family. The principal source of information for the confraternity is its oldest book, an unpublished paper register datable to 1614. The confraternity itself was founded in 1468, just a few months before the Marquis Gabriele Malaspina assumed possession of the territory in the wake of an agreement that finally ended the conflicts between the heirs of Antonio Alberico Malaspina. From the moment of its foundation the confraternity had an oratory. In 1653 the oratory was rebuilt by Pasquale Malaspina as a rather sizeable building (25 m x 13 m). The church holds a valuable fifteenth-century wooden statue of the Madonna Annunciate, to whom, from the seventeenth century on, many miracles have been attributed. The confraternity’s first book is a rich fount of information for the physical aspects of the oratory that allows us to track the work carried out on it and to analyze the confraternity’s organizational structures. In light of this information, the confraternity seems to have been primarily interested in the organization of its members’ devotional life and in religious rituals. It did have, however, a small mutual assistance program that came into operation especially at the time of a member’s death and saw to the funeral services of the deceased and related rituals. The confraternity’s membership list indicates that in the seventeenth century, a time of great importance in the history of the confraternity, there was relatively little evolution in a dynastic sense and the highest positions in the organization went to members from a restricted number of families.

A Ritual Resurgence in Eastern Indonesia

At the invitation of the eastern Indonesian village of Leuwayang, three researchers returned to Kedang to observe a revised harvest ritual once thought extinct. The article contains consideration of recent political changes in Indonesia affecting religious expression, describes the village birthday celebration and the series of community rituals that were subsequently carried out over a three-day period in the original village site. There follows a summary of the nightlong chant accompanying the reciting of male genealogies of the village with an explanation of its references to legendary village history. An attempt is made to place the chant within the comparative study of ritual language. The conclusion briefly tries to situate the rituals in relation to villagers' preoccupations in the modern world.

Vala and Iwato: The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan and beyond

In this paper two fundamental myths and the related rituals from archaic India and old Japan are compared. Exploring their close mutual relationship offers the chance of taking another look at comparative mythology in a wholly new way. This is not done in the old Frazerian way, certainly not in the manner of the diffusionists such as Frobenius and Baumann, nor with the Indo-European-centered method of Dumezil, not to mention the various psychological approaches of Jung, Campbell, and others, or the structuralism of Levy-Strauss and his followers. Instead, the approach proposed here reminds of the 19th century historical and comparative approach. The present proposal and methodology has recently, but unwittingly, been called essentially romantic as it looks for, and points toward, a common source, that certainly may no longer exist, as W. Jones put it with regard to the Indo-European parent language. However, as I have discussed earlier, by careful historical comparison we can isolate certain motifs, individual myths, and even whole myth complexes both in time and space, compare them, and try to trace their common origin.

The three temples: on the emergence of Jewish mysticism

In this ground-breaking study, Rachel Elior offers a comprehensive theory of the crystallization of the early stages of the mystical tradition in Judaism based on the numerous ancient scrolls and manuscripts published in the last few decades. Her wide-ranging research, scrupulously documented, enables her to demonstrate an uninterrupted line linking the priestly traditions of the Temple, the mystical liturgical literature found in the Qumran caves and associated directly and indirectly with the Merkavah tradition of around the second and first centuries BCE, and the mystical works of the second to fifth centuries CE known as Heikhalot literature.The key factor linking all these texts, according to Professor Elior’s theory, is that many of those who wrote them were members of the priestly classes. Prevented from being able to perform the rituals of sacred service in the Temple as ordained in the biblical tradition, they channelled their religious impetus in other directions to create a new spiritual focus. The mystical tradition they developed centred first on a heavenly Chariot Throne known as the Merkavah, and later on heavenly sanctuaries known as Heikhalot. In this way the priestly class developed an alternative focus for spirituality, based on a supertemporal liturgical and ritual relationship with ministering angels in the supernal sanctuaries. This came to embrace an entire mystical world devoted to sustaining religious liturgical tradition and ritual memory in the absence of the Temple.This lyrical investigation of the origins and workings of this supernal world is sure to become a standard work in the study of early Jewish mysticism.

The Ritual and Aesthetic in Electoral Law

The related ritual and aesthetic perspectives of electoral law are explored to understand the social and anthropological position of elections. Attention to the ritual and aesthetic dimensions of the structure of elections enhances the descriptive understanding of their legalistic process, which involves the role of these traditional perspectives in voting and the place of money in elections.

Re-Africanization in Secondary Religious Diasporas: Constructing a World Religion

The most important recent development in the history of Afro-American religions is their expansion across ethnic and national barriers. The diffusion of these religions has created networks of ritual kinship that now span national boundaries giving rise to transnational communities of worshippers. The paper argues that there are stages in the formation of these transnational communities that are related to the religious careers of the practitioners, since the different religious variants they encounter in this path have different implications for their development. In this process of increasing transnationalization, the nationality of origin of the different Afro-American religious variants remains important and must be dealt with in different ways throughout the individual’s religious career. It is argued that the re-Africanization processes that have been observed in practically all Afro-American variants in their new settings constitute the latest stage in the development of these religions and that they are instrumental in the creation of a world religion and of a truly multifarious transnational community of worshippers.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:William Horbury, W. D. Davies and John Sturdy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume 3: The Early Roman PeriodLarry J. Kreitzer and Deborah W. Rooke (eds.), Ciphers in the Sand: Interpretations of The Woman Taken in Adultery (John 7:53–8:11)Marcus Barth and Helmut Blanke, The Letter to Philemon(Eerdmans Critical Commentary)Translated with commentary by Martin Abegg Jr., Peter Flint and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls BibleJoseph A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian OriginsM. Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public EthicsColin E. Gunton, Intellect and Action: Elucidations on Christian Theology and the Life of FaithJames K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational HermeneuticRobert John Russell, et al.(eds.), Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on Divine ActionJ. P. Williams, Denying Divinity: Apophasis in the Patristic Christian and Soto Zen Buddhist TraditionsDonald J. Goergen and Ann Garrido (eds.), The Theology of the PriesthoodPaul Janowiak, The Holy Preaching: The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical AssemblyGeoffrey Wainwright, Is the Reformation Over? Catholics and Protestants at the Turn of the Millennia (The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology 2000)Gary B. Ferngren (ed.), The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1833)Andrew Wright, Spirituality and EducationWilliam Johnston, ‘Arise, My Love ≡’: Mysticism for a New EraPaul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology – Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New KeyRowan Williams (ed.), Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political TheologyNorman P. Tanner, The Councils of the Church: A Short HistoryTranslated with an Introduction by A. F. Norman Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius (Translated Texts for Historians)Selected and translated by Carolinne White, Early Christian Latin Poets (The Early Church Fathers)Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom (The Early Church Fathers)Alexander Callender Murray (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter GoffartJacques Verger, Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle AgesI. S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th Series, 43)Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100–c.1550Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth‐Century EuropeAnne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete WorksNicholas Terpstra (ed.), The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture)Georg B. Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth–century RussiaAdrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1650–1725Hugh McLeod, Secularization in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (European Studies Series)H. S. Jones, Victorian Political Thought(British History in Perspective)John Mantle, Britain’s First Worker–Priests: Radical Ministry in a Post–War Setting

Postcolonial Sun Dancing at Wakpamni Lake

Postcolonial theory assists in making apparent the essentialism of self and other that characterizes Eurocentric colonial discourse. A North American postcolonial hermeneutic is proposed that focuses on the oral voice of tradition embodied in the lived experience of an indigenous community. Postcolonial interpretation entails an interpreter entering into ritual relationship with a traditional community so that the hegemonic pattern of dominant-culture discourse is circumvented. The traditional practices of the Wakpamni Lake community on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota provide the local context for understanding Sun Dancing as a postcolonial undertaking. The postcolonial character of Sun Dancing at Wakpamni Lake is identified through four interrelated features described as four ways of respect. This Sun Dancing expresses a religious praxis, described as a politics of kinship, that contradicts the colonizing power relations rooted in European American cultural heritage. This politics of kinship offers the dominant culture a way to intercultural relationship that disarms the entrenched essentialism of self and other.

Postcolonial sun dancing at Wakpamni Lake

Postcolonial theory assists in making apparent the essentialism of “self” and “other” that characterizes Eurocentric colonial discourse. A North American Postcolonial hermeneutic is proposed that focuses on the oral voice of tradition embodied in the lived experience of an indigenous community. Postcolonial interpretation entails an interpreter entering into ritual relationship with a traditional community so that the hegemonic pattern of dominant-culture discourse is circumvented. The traditional practices of the Wakpamni Lake community on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota provide the local context for understanding Sun Dancing as a postcolonial undertaking. The postcolonial character of Sun Dancing at Wakpamni Lake is identified through four interrelated features described as four ways of respect. This Sun Dancing Expresses a religious praxis, described as a politics of kinship, that contradicts the colonizing power relations rooted in European American cultural heritage. This politics of kinship offers the dominant culture a way to intercultural relationship that disarms the entrenched essentialism of “self” and “other.”