7. What is Religion?
• Exchange
• Indigenous traditions challenge conventional
(i.e., Constitutional) understandings of
religion
• Not strictly ideological--material
• Status of researcher as a participant in
cultural critique and creation
8. Wampum
• Worked shell bead
from the quahoag shell
10. Wampum’s Value
• Purple (black) and
white
– Cosmological attributes
of Earth/Sky,
Night/Day, Creator
Twins
• Purity of intention
– Living force of words
spoken into wampum
and from wampum into
speaker
11. Hiawantha Belt of the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy
• Story of the
Peacemaker and
Hiawantha
• Condolence
– Grief as a sudden
disjunction between
humans and creation
– Wampum restores
relations
13. Wampum Belts
• “Two-Row Wampum”--Guswentha
– Treaty between Haudenosaunee and Dutch 1613
– Residence and exchange as equals
• Non-interference agreement
– Dutch version discovered in 1968
• Emphasis on exclusivity of trade relationship
15. European Wampum
• Wampum as Money
– Tied to the Development of Colonial America
• Access to Beaver pelts
– Basis of trans-Atlantic commerce
– Creation of NYC (JJ Astor), Erie Canal
• Long Island factories
– Last “wampum mint” closed in 1899
– Reorganized worlds of Native and Europeans
• Exchange rate: 3 white/1 black to British penny
16. Wampum and Money: Expor-ations of
Religion as Exchange
• For Haudenosaunee • For Europeans wampum
wampum is an was the basis for trans-
expression of the Atlantic trade
cosmos – Extending colonial
– Extending the empires through
Confederacy through commerce
Condolence – Wampum as money
– Wampum as being • Immigrant phenomenon
• Indigenous phenomenon
17. Money and Native Americans
• Monetary exchange
network (Global
economy) has been the
most detrimental to
Native communities
– Not religion, per se
– Modern notion of
money derived from
Christian worldview
19. Money as Religion
• “Total fact” of modern existence
– Everything is evaluated with respect to monetary
value
• Symbolic, mythic, “faith based,”
• Materiality of our current existence
• Wampum clarifies religious nature of money
– No joke
20. Theology of Money
• Sacred reality is removed
from material life
– Anthrocentric emphasis
• Everything is here for
human beings
• God or Creator is “otiosus”
– Sign of God in money
– Removed from Creation
• Creates a dangerous world
21. Basic Call to Consciousness
What has befallen Native American people
will befall us all
• Environmental degradation
– Expressed in weather and sickness
• Loss of cultural identity
• Not apocalyptic; no sense of optimism
– Self-fulfilling prophecy of Religions which
emphasize the end
22. Native Nations and the UN
• World Stage that respects cultural differences
• Since 1978 there has developed a Indigenous
peoples consultation
– Lead by Oren Lyons of Onondaga
– Haudenosaunee passports
• Quote page 90
– World at a critical point
23. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues
• http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/index.h
tml
• Meeting at UN NYC every spring
• Discussions of the Doctrine of Discovery as a
critical aspect of Indigenous survival