ABSTRACT
If by “indigenous religions” we mean to denote religious traditions that have not (yet) been influenced or colonized by the global “isms,” then such traditions are notoriously difficult to locate, since most of our evidence is not the autonomous self-expression of an ab-original entity (“a story people tell themselves about themselves,” in Clifford Geertz’s memorable phrase), but a product of contact between indigenous cultures and encroaching others. Indeed, the very mediations that make these data available to anyone other than indigenes also render them most problematic (travelers’ accounts, colonial archives, missionary reports, ethnographies, co-authored autobiographies, and studies by those educated in mission schools or Euro-American universities). As a result, our view of the “indigenous” per se is always refracted, if not obstructed: what we observe most clearly is not “the other,” but the situation of encounter between that other and an exogenous intruder. This, however, need occasion no regret, for it provides the stimulus and opportunity to transform our understanding of “indigenous” and “world” religions alike.
