{"id":1267,"date":"2009-12-14T20:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T20:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2009-12-14T20:55:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T20:55:00","slug":"contemporary-pagans-indigenous-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World’s Religions<\/a> is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.<\/a><\/p>\n

This year’s parliament in Melbourne listed “Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples” as one of its key topics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the “indigenous card” since the 1970s, when Oberon Zell and other Green Egg<\/i><\/a> writers argued that Wicca was a form of “indigenous European shamanism.”<\/p>\n

The same claim has been made by some British Pagans in controversies over the management of megalithic sites in the UK and the treatment of prehistoric remains.<\/p>\n

So are today’s revived and re-created Pagan traditions “indigenous.” I think not\u2014not because they lack ancient roots, but because they are not generally connected to land claims and other current political issues. <\/p>\n

In academia, in the world of [Fill in the Blank] Studies, “indigenous” has a more limited\u2014and more political\u2014meaning.  Hang around the people teaching, for example, Native American religion, and you may be told that the descriptor “indigenous” can only<\/i> be applied to people who are or have been oppressed or colonized.<\/p>\n

This claim might seem illogical. After all, were the ancient British not oppressed, and thus not “indigenous,” until the Romans came and created the province of Britannia\u2014at which point they were colonized. And then when the Roman legions left, they were not “oppressed” anymore, so not “indigenous.”<\/p>\n

Forget it. This is all about political issues now<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If you cut through the rhetoric, what is really at stake in discussions of who is “indigenous” is land<\/i><\/b>\u2014and sometimes related issues of political power, reparations, and trying to avoid sharing the guilt for how screwed-up the modern world is.<\/p>\n

Most Anglosphere contemporary Pagans do not directly connect following an “earth-based religion” with political control of acreage itself, but in other places that connection is the underlying concern.<\/p>\n

Particularly in eastern Europe, today’s revived Pagans have made “blood and soil” arguments, saying that their approach is truer to the land than is Orthodox Christianity.<\/p>\n

Anglosphere Pagans may invoke a sort of metaphorical or historical “indigeneity,” talking about people who followed polytheistic religions a millennium or two in the past. In the West, our connections with our Pagan ancestors are intellectual (based on books) and theological. <\/p>\n

We can talk about prejudice and Christian hegemony\u2014but being blocked from giving a prayer at the county commissioners’ meeting is not “oppression” in the sense that the Australian Aboriginals suffered, for example.<\/p>\n

Islam, too, has its “death to the polytheists!” passages in the Qu’ran. Indeed,  I think anyone who opened a Pagan bookstore, etc., in Cairo or Islamabad would be oppressed in a hurry. Is anyone brave enough to revive the worship of Ishtar in Iraq?<\/p>\n

In our religious views and practices, we have much in common with the tribal religions of the world.  In the academic study of religion, common ground is being found between “indigenous” and “Pagan.”<\/a><\/p>\n

In that limited sense, it is useful to show contemporary Paganisms’ (that is a plural possessive) roots in pre-modern, polytheistic,  or “indigenous” cultures.<\/p>\n

But before playing that card, we have to understand that it is usually connected to issues of land rights, grievances over such issues as removal of children into government boarding schools, and other current political struggles.<\/p>\n

In those instances, the typical Wiccan, Heathen, etc., is probably going to be on the sidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World’s Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt. This year’s parliament in Melbourne listed “Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples” as one of its key topics. Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the “indigenous card” since the 1970s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[48,5],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-nature-religion","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10655,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10655","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":0},"title":"New Issue of The Pomegranate Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 22, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Issue 20.2 (2018) table of contents Articles On the Agony of Czech Slavic Paganism and the Representation of One\u2019s Own Funeral among Contemporary Czech Pagans Giuseppe Maiello An Esbat among the Quads: An Episode of Witchcraft at Oxford University in the 1920s Graham John Wheeler Pagan and Indigenous Communities in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Pagan studies\"","block_context":{"text":"Pagan studies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pagan-studies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/pom-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/pom-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/pom-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/pom-header.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10799","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":1},"title":"A New Study of Solitary Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Solitary Pagans: Contemporary Witches, Wiccans, and Others Who Practice Alone is a new study from Helen A. Berger, a sociologist of religion who has been studying contemporary Paganism for decades. Her body of work is large enough now that future scholars will be returning to it again and again for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/solitary-pagans.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3939,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3939","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":2},"title":"Pomegranate 13.1 Table of Contents","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies went to the printer last month. Contents are available online to subscribers or by purchase of individual articles. PDFs of book reviews and of Caroline Tully's article,\u00a0 \"Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8262,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8262","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":3},"title":"Call for Papers: Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Information on the upcoming Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World conference in Krakow, Poland, 24-25 March 2017, may be found at this link. Presentations may address various issues within the following (suggested) topics: Everyday life of contemporary Pagans Understanding human relationships: from till death\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10197","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":4},"title":"“Solitary Pagans,” a New Academic Study","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the mid-1990s, Nancy Mostad, then the acquisitions editor at Llewellyn, told me that they estimated that 70 percent of purchasers of books on Paganism were solitaries.Hence the immense success -- by their standards -- of Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Meanwhile, sociologist of religion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7277,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7277","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":5},"title":"TV Pagans Looking Good \u2013 or at Least Better","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"From the abstract to Robert A. Saunder's paper \"Primetime Paganism: Popular-Culture Representations of Europhilic Polytheism in Game of Thrones and Vikings,\" reprinted at Medievalists.net, in which he argues two points: First, that traditional filmic treatments of pagans [sic] qua villains is shifting, with contemporary popular culture allowing for more nuanced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}