Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations

by Charles D. Thompson Jr., Graham Harvey, Lawrence Martin (Editor)

Indigenous religions are now present not only in their places of origin but globally. They are significant parts of the pluralism and diversity of the contemporary world, especially when their performance enriches and/or challenges host populations. Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations engages with examples of communities with different experiences, expectations and evaluations of diaspora life. It contributes significantly to debates about indigenous cultures and religions, and to understandings of identity and alterity in late or post-modernity. This book promises to enrich understanding of indigenity, and of the globalized world in which indigenous people play diverse roles.

210 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2005

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a challenging revision of many of the contemporary ideas of diaspora in scholarly writing and thinking. Chapters consider ways that indigenous peoples may become diasporic in their traditional land areas, and the ways that many indigenous peoples' histories include migration and continue to keep links outside of their areas as currently understood, as well as the dispersal of cultural texts and practices. There are excellent discussions of the meaning of native, of the circulation of ideas and experiences between 'home' and 'away', and of the issue of the diaspora of the land itself (through a discussion of mining in the Pacific). Most usefully, the collection suggests several different meanings of both disapora (such as, scattering as dislocation, and scattering as reseeding for new growth), and of indigenous (for instance, as a process of relating to place, and an imagined community, and as an ideal type). It is just a shame that it seems only to exist in an extremely expensive hard-back.