Wise People of Great Power
Jaguar-spirit Shamans Among Baniwa of the Northwest Amazon
Keywords:
Shamanism, prophet movements, history, cosmogony, indigenous knowledgeAbstract
Indigenous prophet movements in the Americas have historically engaged the most threatening and dangerous Other, the White Man. The savants of the Northwest Amazon region of South America have mostly sought to defy the destructive power of the White Man’s knowledge by disclosing hidden, internal sources of conmict and conserving religious traditions. A long succession of prophetic leaders from the mid-nineteenth century to the present has sustained the continuity of ancestral traditions even at great risk to the leaders’ lives. I take a multiplex, interpretive approach to these shamanic traditions, grounded in the exegesis of their ancestral practices.
Published
2016-08-01
Issue
Section
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture