Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
51. Was the #NoDAPL occupation at Standing Rock "spiritual" or "religious"?
Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
Richard J Callahan, Jr. [+]
Gonzaga University
Richard J. Callahan, Jr., teaches at Gonzaga University. He is the author of Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields: Subject to Dust; editor of New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase; and co-editor of The Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Religion and Popular Culture. His work is particularly interested in the intersections and co-constitutions of religion, labor, and natural resource extraction.
Description
Pipeline opposition focused on relationships between human and other-than-human beings with respect to water being a source of life; the construction was damaging to sacred space; the language of spirituality, sacrality, and prayer was central to the water protector movement; and the occupation drew in religious communities from a variety of traditions. Still, it is important to examine the various meanings of "spiritual" or "religious" to various constituencies in this context.