ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a series of encounters that exposes how articulations of indigeneities and indigenous religions are both the means and results of translations and comparisons, and how they are simultaneously pedagogical, political, and analytical. It examines episodes that have challenged established expectations of indigeneities and indigenous religions, and thereby highlighted the particular constitutions of such statuses or entities. Most of the episodes have taken place in or around Talamanca (Costa Rica) and Tromsø (Norway), where the author has worked since the years 2000 and 2007, respectively, but, lately, the INREL project (2015–2020), with short research visits in Nagaland (India) and Hawai‘i (USA), has generated additional episodes and challenges. The central argument here is that, by paying careful attention to the equivocations involved in different articulations of indigeneities and indigenous religions, as they arise through specific translations and comparisons, we might gain better understandings of the particularities they comprise and produce, and the pedagogical, political, and analytical possibilities they engender.
