Canadian Census Figures on Aboriginal Spiritual Preferences
A Revitalization Movement?
Keywords:
Aboriginal spirituality, religious freedom, land regimes, colonialism, lawAbstract
This article compares and contrasts several data sources that enumerate the religious or spiritual preferences of Canadian First Nations peoples, exposing trends and discussing inconsistencies between the findings of the Canadian Census and three other contemporaneous data sources. It then examines the growing degree of penetration that Aboriginal spiritualities have in such communities, its relationship to community well-being and asks whether it is empirically possible to claim that, indeed, we are witnessing a revitalization movement of Aboriginal cultures and spiritualities.
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