Indian Pilgrims

Indian Pilgrims
Author: Michelle M. Jacob
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0816533563

Kateri Tekakwitha is the first North American Indian to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Indian Pilgrims examines Saint Kateri's influence and role as a powerful feminine figure who inspires decolonizing activism in contemporary Indigenous peoples' lives.

Indian Pilgrims

Indian Pilgrims
Author: Michelle M. Jacob
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816534578

In 2012 Kateri Tekakwitha became the first North American Indian to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, an event that American Indian Catholics have awaited for generations. Saint Kateri, known as the patroness of the environment, was born in 1656 near present-day Albany, New York, to an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father. Tekakwitha converted to Christianity at age nineteen and took a vow of perpetual virginity. Her devotees have advocated for her sainthood since her death in 1680. Within historical Catholic writings, Tekakwitha is portrayed as a model of pious, submissive femininity. Indian Pilgrims moves beyond mainstream narratives and shows that Saint Kateri is a powerful feminine figure who inspires decolonizing activism in contemporary Indigenous peoples’ lives. Author Michelle M. Jacob examines Saint Kateri’s influence on and relation to three important themes—caring for the environment, building community, and reclaiming the Native feminine as sacred—and brings a Native feminist perspective to the story of Saint Kateri. The book demonstrates the power and potential of Indigenous decolonizing activism, as Saint Kateri’s devotees claim the space of the Catholic Church to revitalize traditional cultural practices, teach and learn Indigenous languages, and address critical issues such as protecting Indigenous homelands from environmental degradation. The book is based on ethnographic research at multiple sites, including Saint Kateri’s 2012 canonization festivities in Vatican City and Italy, the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation (New York and Canada), the Yakama Reservation (Washington), and the National Tekakwitha Conferences in Texas, North Dakota, and Louisiana. Through narratives from these events, Jacob addresses issues of gender justice—such as respecting the autonomy of women while encouraging collectivist thinking and strategizing—and seeks collective remedies that challenge colonial and capitalist filters.

Religious Journeys in India

Religious Journeys in India
Author: Andrea Marion Pinkney
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 143846603X

Explores how religious travel in India is transforming religious identities and self-constructions. In an increasingly global world where convenient modes of travel have opened the door to international and intraregional tourism and brought together people from different religious and ethnic communities, religious journeying in India has become the site of evolving and often paradoxical forms of self-construction. Through ethnographic reflections, the contributors to this volume explore religious and nonreligious motivations for religious travel in India and show how pilgrimages, missionary travel, the exportation of cultural art forms, and leisure travel among coreligionists are transforming not only religious but also regional, national, transnational, and personal identities. The volume engages with central themes in South Asian studies such as gender, exile, and spirituality; a variety of religions, including Sikhism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity; and understudied regions and emerging places of pilgrimage such as Manipur and Maharashtra. “It’s rare to find such diverse accounts of religious travel collected in a single volume, where scholars’ engagements with individual places of pilgrimage in India and with the journeys surrounding them are truly in conversation with one another. For readers, it makes for a deeply enlightening journey. It also raises an interesting question: Is the reality of India powerful enough that it absorbs divergent expressions of religious tourism, making of them a common fabric? Here, so unusually, readers have the materials to decide.” — John Stratton Hawley, author of A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement

Uprising of the Fools

Uprising of the Fools
Author: Vikash Singh
Publisher: South Asia in Motion
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781503600379

The Kanwar is India's largest annual religious pilgrimage. Millions of participants gather sacred water from the Ganga and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Śiva shrines. These devotees--called bhola, gullible or fools, and seen as miscreants by many Indians--are mostly young, destitute men, who have been left behind in the globalizing economy. But for these young men, the ordeal of the pilgrimage is no foolish pursuit, but a means to master their anxieties and attest their good faith in unfavorable social conditions. Vikash Singh walked with the pilgrims of the Kanwar procession, and with this book, he highlights how the procession offers a social space where participants can prove their talents, resolve, and moral worth. Working across social theory, phenomenology, Indian metaphysics, and psychoanalysis, Singh shows that the pilgrimage provides a place in which participants can simultaneously recreate and prepare for the poor, informal economy and inevitable social uncertainties. In identifying with Śiva, who is both Master of the World and yet a pathetic drunkard, participants demonstrate their own sovereignty and desirability despite their stigmatized status. Uprising of the Fools shows how religion today is not a retreat into tradition, but an alternative forum for recognition and resistance within a rampant global neoliberalism.

Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Indian Corn

Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Indian Corn
Author: Edna Barth
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2000-09
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780618067855

Traces the history of this American harvest celebration and the development of its symbols and legends.

"All the Real Indians Died Off"

Author: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807062669

Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as: “Columbus Discovered America” “Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims” “Indians Were Savage and Warlike” “Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians” “The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide” “Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans” “Most Indians Are on Government Welfare” “Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich” “Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol” Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, “All the Real Indians Died Off” challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.

Squanto

Squanto
Author: James R. Rothaus
Publisher: Creative Education
Total Pages: 38
Release: 1987
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780886821616

A biography of the Indian whose many adventures with white people in many countries culminated in his aiding them in their early days in Plymouth colony.

Middle Land, Middle Way

Middle Land, Middle Way
Author: Shravasti Dhammika
Publisher: Buddhist Publication Society
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2008-12-01
Genre: Buddhist pilgrims and pilgrimages
ISBN: 9552401976

A comprehensive guidebook to the places in India made sacred by the Buddha’s presence. Beginning with an inspiring account of Buddhist pilgrimage, the author then covers sixteen places in detail. With maps and colour photos, an essential companion for pilgrim and traveler.