Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, this book uses a close analysis of James R. Walker’s 1917 monograph on the Lakota Sun Dance to explore how the Sun Dance communal ritual complex – the most important Lakota ceremony – creates moral community, providing insights into the cosmology and worldview of Lakota tradition. The book uses Walker’s primary source to conduct a reading of the Sun Dance in its nineteenth-century context through the lenses of Lakota metaphysics, cosmology, ontology, and ethics. The author argues that the Sun Dance constitutes a cosmic ethical drama in which persons of all types – human and nonhuman – come together in reciprocal actions and relationships. Drawing on contemporary animist theory and a perspectivist approach that uses Lakota worldview assumptions as the basis for analysis, the book enables a richer understanding of the Sun Dance and its role in the Lakota moral world. Offering a nuanced understanding that centers Lakota views of the sacred, this book will be relevant to scholars of religion and animism, and all those interested in Native American cultures and lifeways.

Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, this book uses a close analysis of James R. Walker's 1917 monograph on the Lakota Sun Dance to explore how the Sun Dance communal ritual complex--the most important Lakota ceremony--creates moral community, providing insights into the cosmology and worldview of Lakota tradition. The book uses Walker's primary source to conduct a reading of the Sun Dance in its nineteenth-century context through the lenses of Lakota metaphysics, cosmology, ontology and ethics. The author argues that the Sun Dance constitutes a cosmic ethical drama in which persons of all types - human and non-human -- come together in reciprocal actions and relationships. Drawing on contemporary animist theory and a perspectivist approach that uses Lakota worldview assumptions as the basis for analysis, the book enables a richer understanding of the Sun Dance and its role in the Lakota moral world. Offering a nuanced understanding that centers Lakota views of the sacred, this book will be relevant to scholars of religion and animism, and all those interested in Native American cultures and lifeways.

"Co-published with the American Philosophical Society."

This volume provides a comparative philosophical investigation into a particular concept from a variety of angles—in this case, the concept of “miracle.” The text covers deeply philosophical questions around the miracle, with a multiplicity of answers. Each chapter brings its own focus to this multifaceted effort. The volume rejects the primarily western focus that typically dominates philosophy of religion and is filled with particular examples of miracle narratives, community responses, and polemical scenarios across widely varying religious contexts and historical periods. Some of these examples defy religious categorization, and some papers challenge the applicability of the concept “miracle,” which is of western and monotheistic origin. By examining miracles thru a wide comparative context, this text presents a range of descriptive content and analysis, with attention to the audience, to the subjective experiences being communicated, and to the flavor of the narratives that come to surround miracles. This book appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy of religion and science, as well those in comparative religion. It represents, in written form, some of the perspectives and dialogue achieved in The Comparison Project’s 2017–2019 lecture series on miracles. The Comparison Project is an enterprise in comparing a variety of religious voices, allowing them to stand in dialogue.

This book analyses the social, political and religious life of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Highlighting patterns of change and adaptation, it addresses the Shamanic-Buddhist interface that exists in the animated landscape of the Himalayas. Opening with an analysis of the ethnic revival of Nepal, the book first considers the Himalayan religious landscape and its people. Specific attention is then given to Helambu, home of the Hyolmo people, within the framework of Tibetan Buddhism. The discussion then turns to the persisting shamanic tradition of the region and the ritual dynamics of Hyolmo culture. The book concludes by considering broader questions of Hyolmo identity in the Nepalese context, as well as reflecting on the interconnection of landscape, ritual and identity. Offering a unique insight into a fascinating Himalayan culture and its formation, this book will be of great interest to scholars of indigenous peoples and religion across religious studies, Buddhist studies, cultural anthropology and South Asian studies.

In Ecology and Ethnogenesis Adam R. Hodge argues that the Eastern Shoshone tribe, now located on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, underwent a process of ethnogenesis through cultural attachment to its physical environment that proved integral to its survival and existence. He explores the intersection of environmental, indigenous, and gender history to illuminate the historic roots of the Eastern Shoshone bands that inhabited the intermountain West during the nineteenth century. Hodge presents an impressive longue durée narrative of Eastern Shoshone history from roughly 1000 CE to 1868, analyzing the major developments that influenced Shoshone culture and identity. Geographically spanning the Great Basin, Rocky Mountain, Columbia Plateau, and Great Plains regions, Ecology and Ethnogenesis engages environmental history to explore the synergistic relationship between the subsistence methods of indigenous people and the lands that they inhabited prior to the reservation era. In examining that history, Hodge treats Shoshones, other Native peoples, and Euroamericans as agents who, through their use of the environment, were major components of much broader ecosystems. The story of the Eastern Shoshones over eight hundred years is an epic story of ecological transformation, human agency, and cultural adaptation. Ecology and Ethnogenesis is a major contribution to environmental history, ethnohistory, and Native American history. It explores Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis based on interdisciplinary research in history, archaeology, anthropology, and the natural sciences in devoting more attention to the dynamic and often traumatic history of "precontact" Native America and to how the deeper past profoundly influenced the "postcontact" era.

This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.