Ancestors in Post-Contact Religion

Roots, Ruptures, and Modernity's Memory

Editor Steven J. Friesen

    This volume addresses two facets common to our human experience. We are all descendants; we all have ancestors who make powerful claims on our lives. And we live in the aftermath of contact between European-based cultures and other civilizations. It is now clear that native religions are alive and adapting in the contemporary world, just as all religions have done in all eras.

    The phenomenon of ancestors is common to all humans, but while prominent in most indigenous traditions, it has been suppressed in western cultures. This volume articulates crucial issues in the study of post-contact religion through the themes of the ancestral ordering of the world, intense personal attachments to forebears, and the catastrophes of colonization.

Steven J. Friesen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

John A. Grim is Professor of Religion at Bucknell University.

Mary N. MacDonald is Professor of History of Religions, Le Moyne College.