Description
Lesson 11: The Dene
Lesson Tasks
1.
Read and take notes on the online lesson content.
2.
Read and take notes on the required reading.
3.
Post your online answer to the Lesson 11 Discussion
Question, and respond to one of your classmates’
answers.
Required Readings
Note: There will be quiz questions on the readings. The best way to
prepare this week is to carefully read the entire lesson, addressing the
questions about the reading as they come up.
David S. Walsh, The Nature of Food: Indigenous Dene Foodways
and Ontologies in the Era of Climate Change (click on this link).
https://journal.fi/scripta/article/view/67455
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this lesson you, should be able to:
1.
Summarize the basic food traditions (“foodways”) of
the Dene nation (pronounced DEN-nay).
2.
List the main ways in which members of this
Indigenous group understand their relationships with
other beings.
3.
Examine academic articles by applying close reading
strategies suggested in the lesson.
Discussion Question
How does the Dene worldview help you to understand Sikhism and
Santería? To answer that question give three examples that illustrate
the geographical and/or historical impacts on lived religion (the ways
in which a religion is practised and imagined today). Btw, 3 examples,
3 paragraphs (at least)! Present your information as clearly as possible.
Lesson Outline
This lesson is structured differently than previous lessons. We will be doing a
close reading of an article and the lesson notes will guide you through it. Have
the article handy, but do not read it from start to finish. Instead, start by
reading the lesson notes, and they will prompt you to read certain parts of the
article in a specific order.
The heart of this lesson is a close examination of David S. Walsh’s article “The
Nature of Food: Indigenous Dene Foodways and Ontologies in the Era of Climate
Change.” I have a few reasons for choosing to focus on this article.
First, I would like to introduce you to another Indigenous way of combining
food and spirituality. Indigenous communities exist throughout the world, and
Canada alone is home to more than 600 status Indigenous communities with
their distinctive cultures, languages, and art. Categories and names vary, e.g.,
Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Dene and Inuit (Indian and Eskimo are out
of favour in this country), as do Indigenous religious beliefs and practices, but
when it comes to religion there are commonalities that emerge from deep
Indigenous connections to the land and kinship ties to members of their
communities. In our own research we have seen these broad commonalities,
with variations to be sure, in Indigenous communities throughout the world,
from SW China (the Naxi, Bulang and Mosu tribes) to Canada (Ojibway, Seneca,
Innu).
There are also commonalities that emerge from shared experiences of
colonization. For example, sharing bannock, or fry bread in Native gatherings,
including ritual meals, is clearly a result of colonialism, either because the
government provided rations of flour and cooking oil to Natives who signed
agreements, or because it was a way of making ingredients stretch, or because
Christians taught Natives to make and value bread, even though Native people
didn’t always have the money for a Euro-american oven.
This course has touched on the Indigenous Maya (Central America) when
discussing aspects of Christianity, the Sciá’new First Nations community in
which I now live, as part of Lesson 8’s review of food offerings (2.2), and we
dwelt more extensively with the Yoruba (West Africa/Cuba) in the last lesson on
Santería. You’ll have also seen Indigenous traces of religion in Balinese forms of
Hinduism (notably the concern for the rice and sea goddesses, and the sacred
quality given to mountains), and some Javanese (Indonesian) forms of Islam
(remember offerings to the sea goddess in Muslim-dominant Pangandaran?).
Indigenous ways of relating to the spirit world have, in fact, run throughout this
course. It is fitting to devote this last substantive lesson to one expression of it
in Canada’s north.
David Walsh is a scholar of religion, who teaches at Gettysburg College in
Pennsylvania. His article focuses on a northern Canadian Indigenous
community, the Tłįchǫ Dene (pronounced roughly as “clee-cho dennay”). His
research reflects years of fieldwork that he’s done with that community. Walsh’s
observations about the Dene food traditions (he calls them foodways), as they
intersect with religion, are important in and of themselves. Canadians need to
know them. You need to know them. They provide sound entry points to
understanding other Indigenous communities globally as well. And in the
context of a Food and Religion course Walsh’s research is vital. One last thing
here: note the pronunciation of “Dene”: dennay.
Listen to Dr. Walsh address you directly in this course:
Walsh Introduction.m4v.crdownload
Second, I chose to focus on this article because I want to provide you with
another opportunity to engage an academic text. We had our first experience of
this in Lesson 5. This will be your second. Practice like this is useful to you, both
in and out of university.
Third, Walsh’s article offers a different lens through which to revisit Sikhism
and Santería, and bring closure to this third module. As you think about what
Walsh has to say, consider the similarities and differences between the Dene
worldview and those found in those other two religious traditions we examined
in Lessons 9 and 10.
Fourth, the Walsh article provides a welcome opportunity to discuss
terminology. As you’ll see, Walsh prefers ontology to religion, the course’s go-to
term. The de Sousa article in the previous lesson used the term cosmovision,
and we have also run across the terms way of life, worldview,
beliefs, and spirituality. Lesson 11 is an appropriate time to pause and reflect on
the use and meaning of these terms.
Fyi, “For your interest,” when noted in the text, identifies material that can
increase your understanding but will not be tested.
Here’s an outline of the lesson:
1.
The Teaser: Indigenous Food Sovereignty
2.
The Main Event: Analysis of the Walsh Article
3.
2.1
Abstract
2.2
Conclusion: Dene Foodways in the Era of Climate Change
2.3
Introduction
2.4
Contemporary Threats to the Caribou
2.5
Indigenous Ontologies and Personhood
2.6
Dene Foodways: (1) Getting Food
2.7
Dene Foodways: (2) Sharing Food
2.8
Dene Foodways: (3) Returning Food to the Land
2.9
Closing Thoughts on the Article
Application of the Dene Worldview to Sikhism and Santería
4.
Closing Reflections: Religion by any Other Name
Learning Activity
Note: There will be quiz questions on these Google Map learning activities.
–INTERACTIVE MAPPING EXERCISE:
1. Go to Google Maps. In the search box, type Great Bear Lake and
choose the “NT” option, for Northwest Territories. This will be our main
geographical site. Zoom out until you see Great Bear Lake to the north,
and Great Slave Lake to the south. Neither lake is identified by name but
you can’t miss them. Great Bear is the 8th largest lake in the world (the
largest lake that’s fully inside Canadian borders) and Great Slave is the
10th largest lake, and Canada’s deepest.
2. The Dene territory in the article you’ll be studying in this lesson lies
between these two lakes. You’ll also see a map on the second page of the
article that positions the territory.
3. Zoom into the Dene area, using Earth/Satellite mode. Observe the
landscape, which lies just below the Arctic Circle. In this part of Canada,
the Dene land extends beyond the tree line. For three months of the year,
there are only a few hours of daylight, and for another three months,
there are only a few hours of night.
4. Zoom out and move north, and you’ll see how close the region is to the
circumpolar region, which is home to several other Indigenous
communities whose homes sometimes cut across political boundaries.
Have a look at this other map, which will position you in that region.
1. The Teaser: Indigenous Food Sovereignty
Before moving to the Walsh article, listen to this 7:15 minute interview with
Tabitha Martens on Indigenous food sovereignty, from the CBC radio
program Unreserved, with program host Rosanna Deerchild. The Martens
interview begins at 26:15. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2682794365
As you listen, note what Martens says about the deeper food connections to the
land among members of the Peguis First Nation community in Manitoba.
•
What does Martens say about food in her conversation with the host of
this program?
Should you be interested in learning more about Martens’ research on
Indigenous food sovereignty, her University of Manitoba MA thesis, Good News
in Food, can be found with this link. If you explore this thesis, you might want
to start with pp. 43-46.
https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/bitstream/handle/1993/30825/Tabitha%20The
sis%20Final_Sept17_no%20personal.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[Nov 27: the following video is temporarily unavailable. I’ve contacted the film
company and hope to have it up again soon. If this note is still here, the video
link that follows will not work, sigh….] To learn more about traditional
Indigenous foods in the Northwest Territories, watch this 20-minute video made
as part of the Rae-Edzo Friendship Center: The REFC Traditional Food
Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBm0_UXYPSk
2. The Main Event: Analysis of the Walsh Article
My father worked for a year with the Dene on the shores of Great Bear Lake
when he returned from serving abroad during WWII. He was a camp cook, not
an anthropologist, but the stories he told me later about his experiences in that
region offer a good entry point to the Walsh article. The land now inhabited by
the Dene is exhilarating but unforgiving, and access to food has traditionally
been an ongoing concern.
“The necessity of sustenance” for these people about which Walsh speaks is
quite real—even in the 21st century, with increased access to (expensive)
imported foods, and modern technologies such as snowmobiles, fish finders,
and high-powered guns that make hunting and fishing easier. People still die
from the cold, and many face daily food insecurity and hunger.
Moreover, the natural world is ever present. It’s not nature to which one goes,
but nature in which one lives. The tree at the edge of that rock cropping might
have stories connected to it, as might the crook in the creek that runs past the
house. The fish that is pulled through the ice is not only part of a recreational
outing but can be the difference between a meal with carbohydrate alone, or
one with additional protein, as well as the comfort of eating “country food.” The
darkness which fills the land for days on end during the winter months is not
just an inconvenience to be overcome with electric lights or avoided by flying to
Florida; it’s an integral part of one’s world. In that context, the land is
animated, and sustenance can be precarious from day to day. Food matters in
very direct ways.
These days, even with increased access to imported foods, food availability in
this region continues to be a matter of life and death, though less so than it was
when my dad lived there decades ago. As you’ll see from the article, access to
traditional foods keeps the community alive in more ways than one. It not only
feeds them directly, it links the Dene to their past, and reinforces their current
relationships to the rest of the natural world in which they live.
The relationships with nature that the Dene share with other Indigenous
communities were understood (but not always appreciated) by those who set up
residential schools in Canada, and elsewhere. For more information about
residential schools, go here.
You’ll also find videos about residential schools here. https://nctr.ca/education/
Putting children in an entirely different environment was part of a strategy to
“kill the Indian and save the man.” That strategy, perverse and ethicallyreprehensible as it was, to some extent served the intended purpose, but it
often left people shattered.
Looking back, it’s clear that one of the key factors that doomed this type of
school system from the start was a lack of appreciation for the fact that the land
in which the Dene (and others) lived, and the natural world they inhabited, was
integrally linked to their identity and well-being. Take a person out of that
environment, and try to replace their way of engaging nature with a nonlocalized Christian belief system, and you take away their spiritual core. The
article you are about to read helps you to appreciate that reality—one that
continues to be under-appreciated by the non-Indigenous Canadian population.
On that point, I’m reminded of a conversation we had in 2008 with a Balinese
immigrant to Canada, named Nyoman. Not many Balinese immigrate to
Canada, and for good reason (besides the weather!). Their spirits are placebased, with certain mountains being particularly sacred to them. Remove a
person from that place and you remove them from the spirits that have
nourished them and their ancestors all their lives. The spirits, and the land they
inhabit, cannot be put into luggage or transported elsewhere.
Nyoman said that, in Canada, he simply doesn’t feel the spirits in his body.
Occasionally when he is preparing food he gets an inkling of what he felt back
home, so will make a small food offering, but that’s about as far as it goes. He
mentioned having dreams of Bali, feeling like he is really there. When he wakes,
that sense of connection lingers, and it is in moments like these that he feels
the spirits again, but only fleetingly.
It was heart-wrenching for us to hear these comments from him. Waterloo has
much to offer to immigrants, but it could not provide Nyoman with access to his
spirits. He and his wife had the resources to fly back to Bali from time to time,
for spiritual recharges, as they said. Without those opportunities he felt that his
soul would shrivel and die. These are telling words in the context of the history
of residential schools in Canada, and for ongoing attempts by Indigenous
peoples in this country, and elsewhere, to keep those place-based traditions
alive in a 21st century world.
Now let’s turn to the article, starting with the abstract.
2.1 Abstract (Walsh, p. 225)
An abstract is a hyper-condensed summary of an academic journal article—a
teaser, as I called it in Lesson 5. When it’s done well, it touches on all the
important points, and gives the reader enough information to whet their
appetite. That is to say, it gives the reader enough information…but not quite
enough!
•
Content: This abstract contains six sentences. Start by reading and
making sense of those sentences, using your tried-and-true method of
approaching an academic text, whatever that might be. As far as you can
tell, what are the main issues that the article will address?
•
Questions to pursue: Jot down words or concepts that aren’t clear to you.
It might be “ontological” or “personhood”—or you might have stumbled
over caribou being considered persons. Laying out these sorts of need-toknow-more notes for yourself will help make you a more engaged reader
as you make your way through the rest of the article.
•
Personal interests: Consider which aspects of this article are likely to
interest you the most. Get actively involved from the start, not only in
understanding the main points of the article, but in anticipating
knowledge that will be most valuable to you.
Before reading the introduction, move first to the concluding section, where the
author is likely to repeat key points, in a more leisurely manner.
2.2 Conclusion: Dene Foodways in the Era of Climate
Change (pp. 244-245)
This section has three paragraphs. As you did with the abstract, read and make
sense of those paragraphs using your favourite method of approaching an
academic text. Don’t worry about understanding everything. Remember that the
conclusion supposes that you’ve read all the previous sections. What you’re
doing is sneaking a peek at what the author considers most important, so you
can read the rest with more context.
•
Food and religion links: Which sentences seem most related to our “food
and religion” concerns? One that stands out for me, for example, is: “As
both the offering and the goal, food mediates exchanges between
humans, ancestors, the land, and the animals.”
•
Key words: Notice the repeated use of certain words. “Foodways” is one
of them. What other words would you add on your Most Used list? Notice
too that the word “religion” does not come up here. What is said about
“spirits” in the third paragraph?
•
The concluding sentence: In what ways does the final sentence
encapsulate the three paragraphs, and in what ways does it not?
Now let’s return to the start of the article, and continue reading from that point.
2.3 Introduction (pp. 225-227)
•
Summary of the first paragraph: The introduction starts by laying out a
problem, and two different ways of addressing it. The problem is that the
caribou population in the region in which the Dene live is rapidly
declining, mainly (certainly not exclusively) due to climate change, and
unless something is done, the caribou herds in that region might become
extinct. This problem is aggravated by the fact that the Dene depend on
the caribou “for sustenance and identity” (p. 225). The Government of
Canada has chosen to address the problem by significantly restricting
hunting. The Dene, on the other hand, argue instead for increased
respect shown to caribou to “convince the caribou they are still needed”
(p. 226). Underlying the Dene understanding is “a complex relationship of
give and take; the Dene must demonstrate respectful reciprocity so that
the caribou will give their flesh to hunters” (pp. 225-226).
o
For your interest, listen to this 2016 CBC radio clip.
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/02/18/arctic-festival-to-drawattention-to-food-insecurity-due-to-climate-change/
It underscores the food insecurity in the Arctic at large due to climate change,
and the corresponding reduction in caribou numbers.
•
Explanation of ontology: Walsh chooses “ontologies” as the way to
describe how the Dene imagine themselves in the world. This term occurs
in the title of the article, and it recurs several times throughout the
article, without being defined. Walsh refers to relational ontologies,
indigenous ontologies, Dene ontologies, and Western ontologies.
“Ontology” literally means the “study of” (Greek: logos) “being”
(Greek: ontos). Other scholars might have used “worldview,” “spirituality,”
or “cosmovision” to say something similar.
o
o
•
The use of academic sources: Walsh positions himself in the world of
scholarship. Scholars commonly do this in the body of their text, and with
references. Scholarship is about understanding and contributing to
ongoing academic conversations. Walsh mainly acknowledges scholars
who support his points and from whom he has learned, but in one
significant case here (Tylor) he notes a scholar’s position in order to argue
against it.
o
•
Walsh notes elsewhere (private email exchange) that Dene ontology
refers to “their cultural ideas of what makes a thing alive, and what it
means to be that being. For the Dene and most indigenous peoples
these ontologies are relational…. A [human] person has relationships
with their family, their community, their ancestors, and the beings in
their environment. These relationships make that person who they are,
so their very being is relational. Who one is is relative to their
relationships.”
Most Dene are also Christian, at least to some extent. Consider how
those ontologies might intersect, overlap, and even conflict. The
conflicts, when they occur, need not diminish the traditional views.
Humans have a remarkable ability to live quite comfortably with
conflicting ontologies. Consider a person who wears both a scientist’s
hat and a conservative Christian or Jewish hat with which she believes
that the entire universe was created by God a few millennia ago.
The use of Tylor as an academic source: In what way does Walsh think
that Tyler’s argument does not do justice to the Dene context? Make
sure that you understand the last two sentences of the second
paragraph.
Key terms: The last paragraph in this section uses the term “foodways” a
few times. In context, what do you think this term means? Read the
Wikipedia article on this term to get a broader context for its use in
scholarship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodways
What other terms are used more than once in this paragraph, and what
do you think they mean?
•
What is distinctive about this article? This last paragraph does something
else that’s typical in academic articles: it indicates why, in the author’s
view, the research in this article is needed. In this case, his argument is
that something’s been overlooked, or underexplored, by other scholars.
As Walsh describes it, what issues related to Dene life have been
overlooked? What does Walsh propose to do that is different? Does he
convince you that what he’s about to do is worth the effort?
2.4 Contemporary Threats to the Caribou (pp. 228231)
This section provides more information about (1) the Tłįchǫ Dene, (2) the
critical decline in the number of caribou, one of the Dene’s main food sources,
and (3) two different ways of addressing the crisis.
•
New information: You have already been introduced to all three of these
issues. What new information did you learn about all three in this
section—particularly what you think will be relevant to discussions about
food and spirituality?
•
Religion as Sustenance: Walsh, agreeing with research done by Hultkrantz
on circumpolar religion, reinforces the “intense concentration of religious
activities on daily sustenance” (p.229) that he experienced with the Dene.
In other words, a lot of time is spent gathering enough food to keep
people alive, imbued with religious meaning. Dene religious activities, in
Walsh’s view, are “practical, lived, embodied” (p. 229).
•
“Reifying” religion: Pay attention to the concluding sentence to this
paragraph: “Thus, studies of Dene religion must take into account the
necessity of sustenance, or risk reifying Western categories of the
religious” (p. 229). “Reifying” means turning something abstract into
something concrete (res means “thing” in Latin). In other words, scholars
of religion sometimes forget that the category of “religion” they’ve
created to understand human belief systems and actions is just that: a
heuristic category, not the beliefs and actions themselves. But the
category sometimes becomes the “thing” (religion) itself, so when
something different presents itself to the researcher—in this case, a
subsistence-based set of activities and beliefs—scholars don’t always
recognize it as “religious.” Walsh is encouraging his readers to stretch
their category to fit his research data, rather than compress the Dene
worldview to fit the category.
•
A clash of ontologies: Walsh contrasts the “Western ecological ontology”
(p. 230) with the Dene ontology. What is the nature of that contrast as
Walsh describes it in this section (he’ll expand in the next section)?
2.5. Indigenous Ontologies and Personhood (pp. 231234)
•
The “ontological turn” and the Dene worldview: Walsh makes a two-step
argument in the introductory paragraph of this section.
o
The first (major) step supports the emerging scholarly consensus that
Western ontologies (= ways in which people imagine themselves in the
world) on the whole are different than Indigenous ontologies.
According to Walsh, in what ways are those two ontologies different?
By the way, “the Cartesian dichotomy” he mentions refers to a
framework designed by the 17th century French philosopher René
Descartes, sometimes credited with being the “father” of Western
philosophy. “Dichotomy” refers to the division of a thing or idea into
two opposing parts.
o
•
The second step challenges the views of Sharp when it comes to the
Dene. What is Walsh’s objection to Sharp’s argument?
Caribou and other beings as persons: One of Walsh’s key points, repeated
throughout this article, is that the Dene consider caribou to be persons.
Dene, he notes, also do not distinguish between animate (animals,
insects, etc.) and inanimate (rocks, trees, etc.) beings, considering them
all to be persons. That premise allows for the next step of the argument:
the relationships that Dene have with those non-human persons.
o
Summarize the Dene view of personhood as Walsh describes it, and
the nature of the relationships that the Dene have with non-human
persons.
o
If caribou are persons, and the Dene eat them, does that make them
cannibals? If not, why not? What do Walsh and Harvey say about this?
o
By the way, a worldview that allows for communication between
humans and other species of animals is not restricted to the Dene. It is
common among Indigenous populations. For your interest, read a
2016 Al-Jazeera article about a clash of ideologies between Indigenous
and non-Indigenous people in Ontario’s “cottage country,” north of
Toronto, over wild rice. “The plants speak. Somehow, I heard their call
for help,” says one of the Ojibway men featured in this
article. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/2/20/canadas-wildrice-wars
o
And this newspaper
article https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/3/this-river-incanada-now-legal-person notes how another Indigenous community in
Canada gave “personhood” status to their river in February 2021. The
article also surveys other Indigenous applications of personhood across
the world.
2.6 Dene Foodways: (1) Getting Food (pp. 234-236)
This section takes us to the heart of Walsh’s paper: the three components of
Dene foodways that he posits and describes. These include getting, sharing and
returning food. The order is not consecutive but intertwined. In this section he
looks at the first stage.
•
Defining foodways: Walsh builds on the work of a previous scholar, Long,
who defines foodways as the “network of behaviors, traditions, and beliefs
concerning food, and involves all the activities surrounding a food and its
consumption, including the procurement, preservation, preparation,
presentation, and performance of that food” (p. 234).
o
•
What components does Walsh add to Long’s definition of foodways?
Respectful reciprocity: The terms “respect” and “reciprocity” are central to
the “getting food” section (and the article at large).
o
What does Walsh mean when he says that the Dene are encouraged to
approach the caribou with “respectful reciprocity”?
o
Give two examples from this article of non-respectful interspecies
behaviour on the part of a hunter.
•
The dream world: How do the Dene understand the nàte (dream) state in
which hunters sometimes engage animals before the hunt? What do you
think Walsh means when he says that dreaming before a hunt is now
frequently replaced by modern forms of technology?
•
Getting food: You’ll have noticed that this section on “getting” food is
much more about “preparing to get” food. The picture on p. 236 shows a
hunter shooting caribou with a high-powered rifle, but the accompanying
text is about relationships and preparation.
o
In summarizing this section of the paper, list all the preparatory
components to the hunt noted by Walsh. Why do you think his focus
has been on preparation?
2.7 Dene Foodways: (2) Sharing Food (pp. 237-240)
•
Sharing: Just as the previous section on “getting” food addressed more
than killing the animal, this section on “sharing” food is more expansive
than you might think. It begins with a generalization (“sharing is a social
necessity,” p. 237) before presenting an array of examples.
•
Types of food: Walsh begins by describing the types of foods and eating
practices in people’s homes, and during feasts. The mix of traditional and
new is quite striking, from caribou to KFC.
o
What were some of Walsh’s eating experiences in Dene homes?
•
Interspecies interconnections: He ends the section by underlining the
broad interconnections expected from men and women, and human and
non-human: “The activities of hunting necessarily draw connections with
a larger community of human and other-than-human beings” (p. 239).
•
Patriarchy: Walsh argues that, though “gender inequality exists in Dene
sociality,” the patriarchal bias that is often perceived regarding the hunt is
actually minimized if one understands the hunt as more than the killing of
an animal. He makes this argument in the context of broader comments
about gender.
o
What is Walsh’s argument about the role of gender in foodways in
general, and the hunt in particular?
2.8. Dene Foodways: (3) Returning Food to the Land
(pp. 240-243)
•
Returning food to the land: Walsh notes that “the gift of the animal is
returned in two manners, the first of which is returning food by-products
so the animal may be reborn more easily…. The second manner of
returning food to the land is through food offerings in ceremonies and
personal acts of reciprocity called ghàts’eèdi, ‘to make an offering’, or as
my consultants state in English, to ‘pay the land’” (pp. 240-241).
o
•
Food offerings to ancestors: The Dene view of ancestors as presented by
Walsh is nuanced. Read carefully what he says about ancestors on pp.
241-242.
o
•
Describe both types of offerings. What is typically done, why is it done,
and what are the dangers if a person fails to make these offerings?
How are Dene ancestors fed, why are they fed, and what do these
offerings tell you about the Dene worldview, or ontology?
Respectful reciprocity: Giving back, or gifting, Walsh notes in the
paragraph at the bottom of p. 242, is particularly important to understand
in times of crisis, like the current decline of Caribou numbers from Dene
hunting grounds. The complementary roles played by all those who share
“personhood” can collectively benefit or help sustain the ecosystem.
2.9 Closing Thoughts on the Article
As usual, you’ll want to pause at this point before going on to the next
section of this lesson, to reflect on your main take-aways from the article.
•
What are Walsh’s main points?
•
What did you find most thought-provoking and valuable to yourself, in
this article?
Should have you have any questions or comments about the reading, just
ask and I will be happy to address them.
By the way, don’t forget that when Walsh talks about “Dene” worldviews, he
knows–as you now should too at this point in the course–that not every
Dene person holds the same ontology. Some are fully secular, others are
more Catholic than the Pope (as the expression goes), and many dwell in
mutually conflicting spaces when it comes to spiritual, or religious,
worldviews. And some move from one ontology to another (and sometimes
back again) in the course of their lives, as you might have already done in
your life. Walsh is describing the traditional Dene worldview. It’s a
worldview that’s very much alive today among the Dene, but it doesn’t
inform every Dene person’s life in the same way and to same degree.
Walsh also doesn’t discuss every Dene practice. You might have noticed
that his article says nothing about fasting. This is not to say that fasting is
absent from Dene life. Traditionally, fasting among the Dene has been a
kind of vision quest. Young people fast, and isolate themselves from their
community, in order to be more receptive to receive teachings from the
spirit world, including their ancestors. This happens at certain pivotal times
in their development, e.g., transitioning from childhood to puberty, before
getting married. It also happens throughout a person’s life when a person
seeks outside assistance to get their lives back on track. Someone else (or
the community at large) can choose the time and the length of the fast
(e.g., when a mother sees that her daughter has had her first
menstruation), and the person sometimes chooses it themselves (e.g., to
find a way out of difficult relationship). Sometimes drummers are brought
in, and elders, to support a person’s fast. But on the whole it remains an
intense individual experience.
Back to the Walsh article –> for your information I was particularly taken by
four passages:
2.9.1
“The Dene must demonstrate respectful reciprocity so that the caribou will
give their flesh to hunters” (p. 226).
•
“Respectful reciprocity” in this instance is possible because the Dene
consider caribou to be persons—not the same as humans, but
nonetheless worthy of respect. Within this worldview, the being who
seeks to eat and the being who offers itself as food are part of a
respectful, reciprocal relationship. Their traditions tell the Dene that
this inter-species relationship is possible.
•
The “must” in that quotation underlines the point that, for the Dene,
unless respect is heightened towards the caribou, they may not
return, and a basic food source that has nourished and grounded the
Dene (and, one presumes, has been vital to the caribou) for hundreds
of years could disappear. Dene traditions teach them that the only
way to address the crisis is through rebuilding relationships with the
caribou, at a time when scientists and other officials are advocating
another way forward, including restrictions on the number of animals
that can be killed.
2.9.2
Dene religious activities, in Walsh’s view, are “practical, lived, embodied”
(p. 229).
•
Caribou are not “spirits.” They are flesh and blood caribou, with
personhood. The “spiritual” component is the relationship that is
imagined between caribou and Dene. It’s a relationship that can
transcend linear time—e.g., something done in the past can impact
on something in the future, and a future act, such as properly
disposing of meat remains, can impact on something in the present.
It’s a relationship that continues to exist when life leaves a body at
death. Overall, the core of the relationship for the Dene
is practical (Dene need to eat and want as many caribou as possible
to gift themselves to them), lived (the hunt is not disconnected from
the worldview), and embodied (we’re talking about real caribou and
human bodies, not imagined spirits).
2.9.3
Now add to this the following: “Food mediates exchanges between
humans, ancestors, the land, and the animals” (p. 244).
•
Walsh adds to the mix ancestors, the land, and other animals besides
the caribou. All are thought to function in the same world, in
relationships with one another. Adding land, and the animals and
ancestors who inhabit it, reinforces the importance of place, and
place-based relationships.
•
Notice the food, including the food offerings to which Walsh refers in
this article. As we’ve so often seen in this course, food brings
together the pieces of the puzzle—in this case: people, the land, the
animals, and the ancestors. Food facilitates relationships.
2.9.4
A hunt, for the Dene, includes preparation (sometimes involving dreaming
of the animal), travel, killing and field dressing animal(s), respectfully
leaving behind unused parts of the animal (not seen as “waste”),
distributing meat to female heads of households, preparation of the meat
by these women, and serving the food. “Sharing food necessarily involves
the expertise of both genders, and is itself an integral aspect of hunting.
Dene women are powerful hunters” (p. 239). Some parts of the animal
have other uses beyond food, such as clothing, drums, and bone tools,
which also honour the animal.
•
I appreciated Walsh’s attention to the role of women, and the way he
broadened “hunters” in ways that took into account the
responsibilities of many people, including women. This broadening
allowed him to appreciate the value of women in the Dene hunt, in
the same way that attention to the role of food in religious lives helps
us to appreciate the value of women in religious life in general.
•
Broadening the hunt in this manner is also consistent with the overall
emphasis on respectful reciprocity—among human persons, and
between humans and other persons in the interconnected world they
inhabit.
•
Let me add that the hunt also includes the drumming and chanting
that welcomes the caribou hunters home when they return from the
hunting areas in the north. Dene drums, as you saw in the intro video,
are made out of caribou hide, and have long been an integral part of
Dene cultural life. Consider re-watching this drumming video. You’ll
find that you understand it differently than you did the first time.
One last thing: should you be interested in learning more about the Dene,
consider watching a few episodes of “Dene: A Journey,” a TV documentary
series that presents different aspects of current Dene culture. You’ll find the
episodes here. http://deneajourney.com/
3. Application of the Dene Worldview to Sikhism and
Santería
As you know by now, having reached Lesson 11 in the course, religious food
practices vary across the world and between traditions, but there are significant
points of overlap. People are people, after all, and our bodies, including our
brains, function in fairly predictable and constrained ways. If we imagine
ourselves in the context of a broader world of invisible and powerful spirits—
whether we’re Sikhs, practitioners of Santería, traditional Dene, Anglicans, and
so forth—our actions vis-à-vis those spirits and our explanations of those
actions are not all that different when you strip away the externalities (which, to
be sure, also tell us much about human nature and cultural formation).
This shared human basis to religion makes it worthwhile to ask—using a
taxonomic framework—how a particular species of religion might help us to
make more sense of another species, or the broader genus. As a way of
wrapping up this third Module, let me then ask how the Dene worldview
possibly adds to our appreciation of Sikhism and Santería.
I suggest a few possibilities, then turn the applications over to you.
First, traditional Dene forms of spirituality offer another example of how
Indigenous forms of spirituality can exist comfortably alongside Catholicism
(although not all Catholic priests would be comfortable with this situation). The
second scene of the drum-making video you watched shows a prominent
Catholic church (2:14). Most Dene, like practitioners of Santería, are Catholic
(Catholicism is also the most widely-practised religion among Canadian
Indigenous peoples). Both the Dene and practitioners of Santería go to church
on Sundays and other special days, many get married and buried with church
ceremonies, and at the same time they continue to hold spiritual beliefs that
existed long before Christianity entered their lives—and a few that are hybrids.
We saw the same sort of combination among the Maya in Antigua, you might
remember—with a variation in southern Java (Indonesia) that mixes Indigenous
and Muslim. What might appear to be irreconcilable differences on paper end up
working in practice. Food offerings to spirits, including ancestors, and to various
manifestations of nature, are one of those differences. The importance of those
food offerings appears to override, in these cases, the Christian (and Muslim)
teachings that don’t support these sorts of ways of relating to the spirit world.
In other words, looking back at Santería through a Dene lens underlines the
view that the Catholic-Indigenous mix is neither surprising nor incompatible.
Second, the Dene ontology at the root of those food offerings is consistent with
the notion of guru among Sikhs. You’ll remember that “guru” for Sikhs applies
to the people who started the religion, as well as to the sacred text, to the
community at large, and to God. Where the Dene might say “food mediates
exchanges between humans, ancestors, the land, and the animals” a Sikh might
say “food mediates exchanges between all four gurus and humans.” Stating it in
this Dene-esque manner allows us to appreciate the reciprocal and respectful
nature of these Sikh offerings that might otherwise be overlooked or
understated. Putting the guru to bed and returning food to the land share a
similar way of imagining oneself in relationship to others in the world.
Third, if you consider that the Dene have long lived on the edge of starvation—
with basic subsistence driving the nature of their relationship with the caribou
and other animals—consider the following statistics about the harshness of life
in Cuba in 1958, when American control was at its high point, a year before the
Cuban revolution: “Only 4 per cent of the Cuban peasantry ate meat as a
regular part of their diet, while 1 per cent ate fish, less than 2 per cent eggs, 3
per cent bread, 11 per cent milk; none ate green vegetables” (Eric
Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492–
1969, 1970, p. 479). Can there be any doubt that Santería in those days (so
too before and after, to varying degrees) was also grounded in subsistence,
with the accompanying need to seek out help from the ancestors and orishas?
In the case of both the Dene and practitioners of Santería (think too of other
communities we’ve studied, including those Balinese children who did not touch
the offerings made to the sea goddess), subsistence does not mean eating
everything possible. It means nurturing a resilient relationship with beings in
the broader world, whose ongoing help is needed to ensure that people are fed
tomorrow, next month, and next year. This is one reason why Indigenous
teachings have increasingly become part of the environmental discourse
globally as the entire world seeks to address a crisis that is far larger than the
disappearing caribou.
Learning Activity
Now think back to other features you’ve just learned about the Dene, and see if
you can link some of them to Sikhism and Santería in ways that shed more light
on those two traditions. Doing so will enable you to answer this week’s
discussion question: “How does the Dene worldview help you to understand
Sikhism and Santeria? Give three examples.”
4. Closing Reflections: Religion by any Other Name
Walsh uses a variety of terms, interchangeably, to describe Dene relationships
with the land, and with one another: ontology, worldview, spirituality,
and religion. He also uses the term beliefs once, attributed to another scholar.
Add to that cosmovision, a less common term which you encountered in the
reading from the previous lesson, and way of life, which has also come up
frequently throughout this course, and you’ve got the typical range of terms
that occur in discussions of this nature. Some people feel strongly about these
terms; for example, they may say that “religion” is bad but “spirituality” is
good, or conversely “spirituality” is hokey and “religion” is legitimate.
I’ve leaned on the term “religion” throughout the course, though not without
exceptions. I raise the issue now because Walsh began his article by using
“ontology” as his preferred term, and in dealing with Indigenous practices and
beliefs in general one frequently encounters the term “spirituality” (rather than
“religion”)—as though Indigenous peoples have spirituality, and others have
religion. Is Dene ontology the same as Dene spirituality or Dene religion? It can
be, but this conclusion remains an area of debate and discussion.
As we move toward the final lesson of this course, let me add a few closing
comments that relate to this course as a whole.
There is no single definition of religion, nor is there agreement among scholars
(and others) on which term is preferable to describe human beliefs, actions, and
institutions that connect humans to a non-physical spirit world. I encourage
you, in this course and elsewhere, to feel comfortable using the term you
prefer, while knowing why you prefer it. Note, however, that Canadian law does
not guarantee the right to “freedom of spirituality” or “freedom of ontology”;
“religion” is a term that Indigenous (and other) people themselves are forced to
invoke, at least in certain situations.
If you are the kind of person who appreciates specificity, here’s a definition for
religion that is workable and succinct: Religions are confluences of organiccultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and
superhuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries (Thomas A.
Tweed, Crossing and Dwellings: A Theory of Religion, 2006, p. 54). By the way,
“organic” for Tweed refers to human physiology. This is a kind of scholar’s
definition that aims to encompass all the things normally included in “religion.”
In the end, all these terms are attempts to describe and explain things that
people think and do, and to group them under certain categories. For
practitioners a preferred term can simply be the way that something is
familiarly called.
For me, two fundamental and useful categories (Walsh would call
them ontologies) are “religious” and “secular”: we either live our life believing
that a spirit dimension exists, or we don’t. (Of course, some people move from
one category to the other during their lifetime, and some, while dwelling in one
of these categories, have a toe in the other one.) The study of religion is the
study of people who believe in some sort of spirit dimension, and who act on
those beliefs in a variety of creative ways. This course has shone the spotlight
on the various ways in which food is integral to these creative interactions.
What is your preferred term for people who imagine and connect to a
spirit world—is it “religion” or something else? Do you know where and
when you picked up this term?
Belief in the existence of a spirit world invariably includes belief in many
spiritual entities, even in traditions that promote a single God. People in those
“monotheistic” traditions imagine their God in the context of other
spirits/angels, and realms such as heaven and hell that are thought to contain
an element of people who’ve died. Regardless of the religious tradition in
question, interacting with entities in the spirit world can get complicated, as
we’ve seen in this course through the medium of food.
For traditional Dene, dead persons (of all species) continue to exist in the
spiritual world. Adding dead caribou, and other plants and animals, to dead
people in that spiritual realm, while believing that the spiritual and physical
realms are interconnected, creates a complex reality for them. All the more so
given that one type of person (humans) kills and eats another kind of person
(e.g., caribou) when they’re in the physical world, yet both types of persons not
only co-exist without killing in the spiritual world but also continue to influence
people living today in the NWT. Getting food, sharing food, returning food: are
all done by traditional Dene in the context of their lived experiences and their
worldview.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
We offer the bestcustom writing paper services. We have done this question before, we can also do it for you.
Why Choose Us
- 100% non-plagiarized Papers
- 24/7 /365 Service Available
- Affordable Prices
- Any Paper, Urgency, and Subject
- Will complete your papers in 6 hours
- On-time Delivery
- Money-back and Privacy guarantees
- Unlimited Amendments upon request
- Satisfaction guarantee
How it Works
- Click on the “Place Order” tab at the top menu or “Order Now” icon at the bottom and a new page will appear with an order form to be filled.
- Fill in your paper’s requirements in the "PAPER DETAILS" section.
- Fill in your paper’s academic level, deadline, and the required number of pages from the drop-down menus.
- Click “CREATE ACCOUNT & SIGN IN” to enter your registration details and get an account with us for record-keeping and then, click on “PROCEED TO CHECKOUT” at the bottom of the page.
- From there, the payment sections will show, follow the guided payment process and your order will be available for our writing team to work on it.
