Sacred Relations:

Indigenous Perspectives on Religion

Dr. Sunaina Keonaona Kale (Dartmouth College)

SEM Student News Staff Contributor

In February 2021, I moderated a virtual event called Understanding the Sacred: Listening to Indigenous People and Land through my graduate school, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).[1] The event was a panel featuring Mia Lopez, Maura Sullivan, Lanakila Mangauil, and Puanani Apoliona-Brown. We conceptualized this panel as a confluence of Chumash and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) culture-bearers and activists, grounding the discussion in the ongoing land struggles for the Chumash community[2]—the Native people of the land on which UCSB sits—and connecting their experiences with the fight against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna a Wākea in Hawai‘i.[3]

The panelists discussed meanings of the term “sacred” from Chumash, Kanaka Maoli, and more broadly Indigenous points of view. Lopez and Mangauil talked in detail about what “sacred” means to them, informed by their positions as culture-bearers in their communities. Lopez is a cultural representative for the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation. She regularly works with Native students at UCSB, and she often facilitates welcomes and teaches Chumash cultural knowledge at the school. Lanakila Mangauil is a traditional culture-bearer from Hawai‘i Island and has been significantly involved in the movement against the TMT. Strikingly, both Lopez and Mangauil spoke about the sacred in similar ways despite coming from disparate Indigenous communities. To them, something is sacred because of the relationships in which it is embedded, and, simultaneously, the relationships are sacred too.

[…]something is sacred because of the relationships in which it is embedded, and, simultaneously, the relationships are sacred too.

As I listened to them speak, I realized that their notions of the sacred were vastly different from mainstream Western (or perhaps Christian) conceptualizations of religion, in which religion and the sacred are often starkly delineated from the profane and other areas of life. In Indigenous cultures more broadly, such stark boundaries are not as present. That is not to say that there have not been rules for behavior, ceremonies, or profoundly sacred entities that must be engaged with carefully and with the proper protocol. For example, in Kanaka Maoli culture until 1819, the kapu system determined how Kānaka Maoli interacted with each other, the ‘āina (land/environment), and deities according to a set of rules that kept the world in balance. Kānaka Maoli knew their role in the relationships expressed through the kapu system and understood the “disorder” that would result from breaking the rules (Lanakila Mangauil, email to author, August 19, 2021).

As I listened to them speak, I realized that their notions of the sacred were vastly different from mainstream Western (or perhaps Christian) conceptualizations of religion, in which religion and the sacred are often starkly delineated from the profane and other areas of life. In Indigenous cultures more broadly, such stark boundaries are not as present.

My point is that, with something like the kapu system, the rules applied to all aspects of life all of the time. There was no “separation of church and state.” According to Lopez’s and Mangauil’s definitions, the sacred is in everything. All human and more-than-human entities—like land, water, animals, plants, gods, and more—exist in webs of relations. In fact, reciprocal relationships, where entities feed, care for, and perpetuate each other, are the bedrock of many Indigenous worldviews (Wilson 2008, 7). Robin Wall Kimmerer’s concept of the “grammar of animacy” expresses a similar idea: if we consider everything around us living beings (as do many Indigenous cultures), we are beholden to respect and take care of them (2015, 56-59).

In short, the term “religion” does not make a great deal of sense in a lot of Indigenous contexts. Perhaps one meaning of the word “faith” could be used to describe Indigenous peoples’ belief in sets of rules like the kapu system: that they have faith that the rules will keep the world in balance. However, it is not blind faith or faith in something beyond comprehension. Instead, to me, the words “worldview,” “epistemology,” and “ontology” seem more appropriate to Indigenous “religious” or “faith” practices. Ongoing Indigenous struggles to protect land and the environment, like the ones highlighted in our panel, are worldviews in which the land, etc., are considered relatives. Maintaining sacred relations is thus a fundamental part of many Indigenous cultures and, as the panelists and Kimmerer suggest, is something all humans are embedded in and beholden to.

Acknowledgements

Mahalo nui loa to Mia Lopez and Lanakila Mangauil for your wisdom and comments on this piece!

References

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2015. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax and Winnepeg: Fernwood Publishing.