ABSTRACT
The way Kwara’ae conceives of their political relationships goes a long way to explain their relationships with the ghosts of their ancestors. This chapter considers how the kinds of relationships which conferred authority among the living also gave ghosts power both for and over their living dependants. Tabu is also a key to the ritual procedures by which the power of ghosts was controlled and directed, through exchanges which also involved the ghosts in relationships of exchange among the living. Kwara’ae religion was concerned all with maintaining good relationships with such ghosts, whose actions they saw in all the important events affecting their lives. The demands of ghosts could become a burden and their power a threat, or so it came to seem once people were offered the alternative of Christianity. Priests held their authority through the clan system which dominated people’s relationships with one another and with the ghosts of their ancestors.
