Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
16. What makes Vodou an Indigenous tradition?
Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
James Padilioni, Jr. [+]
Swarthmore College
James Padilioni, Jr. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College. His research and teaching foreground African Diasporic ritual cultures, ontology and critical race theory of Blackness, and deep ecology studies, with a particular focus in Afro-Latinx folk Catholicism, herbalism and pharmacopeia, and spirit ecstasy traditions. James also cohosts the Always Already critical theory podcast (alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com).
Description
If indigeneity refers to “that which the earth generates of itself,” then we must reevaluate Vodou traditions as a store bank of indigenous Afro-Amerindian perspectives on sacred ecology, as Vodou’s intergenerational rites of obligation and libation bind communities to the land, and to each other. In these Anthropocenic times of amplifying climate change, the indigenous practice of Vodou offers fresh hope for creating sustainable, planetary futures.