Can a River Be A Person? | Indigenous Traditions: Crash Course Religions #7

Hi! I’m John Green and welcome  to Crash Course Religions. So, this is the Whanganui River.

To the Māori people of New  Zealand, it’s not just water. It’s a living being connected to themselves. An ancestor.

European colonizers didn’t  see it that way, of course. Over a hundred years, they and their  descendants would deplete the river’s fish, pollute it with farm waste and  sewage, and legally cut it to pieces, which is hardly how you’d treat something you respect. But from the day the Europeans set  foot on the shores of the Whanganui, the Māori were ready for a fight—one  that would last over a century and become the longest-running legal  battle ever seen in New Zealand.

They were going to try to convince the world of what they already knew—that  the Whanganui River is a person. [THEME MUSIC] Before Europeans arrived, there was no  formal separation between the sacred and the secular, or the physical and  the spiritual, among the Māori. They—and many Indigenous peoples—don’t have a direct equivalent for the English word “Religion.

” In fact, the closest concept to religion even today is a word introduced by European missionaries, “whakapono,” which means “faith” or “trust. ” Likewise, English has no direct equivalent to Te Awa Tupua, a Māori term that describes the whole Whanganui river system’s physical and spiritual essence as a being with its own interests. So as we’ve already discussed,  beginning in the 15th century, a relatively small set of European  countries took their own religion on the road, colonizing, displacing,  and subjugating Indigenous people.

As colonizers encountered local traditions and cultures, they dismissed and suppressed beliefs that didn’t fit their own Christianity-shaped ideas of what counted as “religion,” even as traditions and beliefs in those indigenous communities shaped European religion. In the 19th century, several countries justified the forced assimilation and Christian conversion of Native peoples based on the so-called “inferiority” of their native traditions. Like, in the U.

S. , for example, this  happened for decades—despite the First Amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ” The point is, the word “religion” has  long reflected a particularly Western and Christian way of thinking  about the world and the self.

So if we were to ask, “Are Māori beliefs part of a religion? ” some would argue it’s what the Buddhists call “a question wrongly put. ” It’s like asking your Grandma if she was a crunchy mom, a silky mom, or a scrunchie mom—like sure, you could ask her to retrofit her life into those invented internet categories, but that would be… weird, although my grandma was the very paragon of a five martini and send the kids out to play mom.

Sorry, Nanni. I don’t like to disrespect the ancestors, but, well… you know. Anyway, this is why even though  some Indigenous peoples embrace “religion” as a label, others reject it  as a distortion of their own traditions, which in many cases predate the  invention of the word “religion.

” Today, many people prefer the term Indigenous religious traditions over just “religion. ” These traditions are diverse and dynamic, constantly changing with the  particulars of a time and place. Still, there are a few common themes across  many Indigenous cultures’ traditions, which can help us understand the Māori concept of Te Awa Tupua, and how a river can be viewed as a person.

First, many Indigenous religious traditions recognize a diversity of gods and spirits, embedded in their creation stories,  and rituals, and the order of society. Some recognize spirits of place, nature, and animals; others shapeshifters, tricksters, and ancestors. Some traditions are polytheistic,  meaning they recognize many gods, while others take a pantheistic perspective, where everything is a manifestation of the divine.

Even sweet potatoes. There’s no all-inclusive belief here; every  Indigenous community has its own traditions and customs which can vary from location to location and even person to person. But there is a popular theme:  which is that humans aren’t the only spiritual beings bopping around the universe.

Which can start to make us think differently  about rivers… and a lot of other things. Like, in Mesoamerican traditions,  there’s the nagual: a guardian spirit linked to a person from birth,  usually taking the shape of an animal. Often, whatever happens to a person’s nagual—good or bad—is believed to shape the  course of that person’s life.

And in many Indigenous African traditions, diverse spirits are viewed as active  forces that, like, do things in the world. Like, take Haitian Vodou—with roots tracing back to West and Central Africa, and communities of enslaved people forced to work on Caribbean plantations starting in the 16th century. Vodou recognizes tons of  different spirits called lwa.

Spirits of water, love, trees, death. Lwa are the spirits that people  can have a personal relationship with—unlike the higher god that  people can’t talk to directly. Lwa are so accessible, in fact,  that venerating them with their favorite foods and dances can bring  the honor of being possessed by a lwa, which doesn’t have the negative  connotations you might expect.

Vodou practitioners liken the experience  to becoming a horse the lwa is riding. Then there’s the importance of  kinship: those bonds we form with each other that bring structure and  order to our social and spiritual lives. To many people in the Kanyen'kehà:ka,  or Mohawk, tradition, kinship is seen as something you do, not just a status you have.

You take care of your kin,  your kin takes care of you. And that kinship extends to the place you  live and everything that lives there with you. And in many Indigenous African traditions, that  sense of reciprocity extends to ancestor spirits, who are thought to occupy a separate realm  from the living but are still linked to us.

When ancestor spirits are honored with offerings, those spirits can help good  things come to their living kin. And some Indigenous Hawaiians contend that everything—humans, animals,  land, sky—shares a kinship. Ancestor spirits known as ‘aumakua are  viewed as guardians for their descendants, often taking the form of an animal  such as a lizard, owl, eel, or shark.

It’s thought that kinship is a bond even  the separation of death can’t break. The living can call upon their  ancestors through prayer, and ancestors can make their  presence known in dreams. Finally, many Indigenous traditions hold strong connections to the landscapes they call home, and that’s gonna take us back  to the river story, I promise.

Native American communities often use the phrase “since time immemorial” to convey just how deep their  ties to ancestral lands go. And that’s a very different  relationship to place—and to time, really—than me saying, “I grew up in Orlando. ” Orlando didn’t even exist two hundred years ago, and with any luck may not exist  two hundred years from now.

Just kidding, Orlando. I love you. Kinda.

So this connection since time immemorial is why Indigenous peoples sometimes speak of not being from a place, but of a place. The Māori, with whom we began this episode, describe themselves as “people  of the land,” tangata whenua. That word “whenua” means “land” but also “placenta,” the organ that  nourishes a fetus before birth.

So when the Māori call themselves  “tengata whenua,” they’re invoking a bond to the land that’s like a mother and child. At the same time, the Māori—and many other Indigenous people—often find themselves displaced from the ancestral  lands that they’re connected to. Many also have traditional practices  restricted by governing nation-states that don’t always recognize their beliefs as legitimately “religious,” much less legal.

Like, consider the ceremonial  use of peyote—a type of cactus that contains mescaline, a psychedelic chemical. For centuries, Indigenous peoples in  what’s now Mexico and the southwestern United States used peyote in their  traditional medicine and ceremonies. By the end of the 19th century, dozens of Great Plains tribes had adopted peyote into their own traditional practices.

And a movement called the Native  American Church formed around an ethic of kinship and taking peyote as a sacrament. But federal and state governments, churches, and even some tribal groups didn’t  consider peyote ceremonies “religious. ” Decades of legal battles ensued.

And it wasn’t until 1994, with an amendment  to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that previous laws were overruled, granting legal protection to Native  peoples’ ceremonial use of peyote. So, Indigenous people have had to fight to gain  recognition for their practices and perspectives, working within the confines of  the Western concept of “religion. ” But at the same time, they’ve  often drawn upon their unique perspectives to find creative  solutions to legal challenges.

And that brings us back to the Whanganui River. In the Māori traditional view, the river has a life force inextricable from their own lives, which is often expressed through the saying: “I am the river, and the river is me. ” When the river is disrespected, like in the ways  the Europeans treated it, the people are, too.

Not only did the colonizers disrespect the land, but they took control of it through violence  and some extraordinarily rotten deals. Like, an area the size of Manhattan was traded for  some umbrellas, muskets, and musical instruments. For over a century, the Māori fought for  their view of the river to be recognized.

At first, they worked within the construct of  ownership as prescribed by New Zealand law, citing an 1840 treaty that hadn’t been honored. But after decades of deadlock,  the Māori shifted their strategy. In 2008, they began to push for a different  legal construct, one that actually reflected how they view the Whanganui River: as  a single, indivisible being—a person.

And if you think a river can’t be a person,  I would encourage you to think again. The US Supreme Court found that  corporations can be people. There have been other species  than humans who were people.

In other religious traditions, gods  are people, or giants are people. So, they knew it could be done. And in 2017, their efforts paid off.

New Zealand granted The Whanganui  River legal personhood, recognizing it as Te Awa Tupua—a living  being with rights of its own. Now there are limits to this;  like, nobody can sue the river. But personhood means the river is now  legally recognized as a connected whole, with appointed guardians  who can speak on its behalf.

And even though this is a new perspective for  the government of New Zealand, for the Māori, it represents the end of a long struggle  to have their belief recognized. So, is this Māori belief a religion? Well… of course, that’s tricky.

As we’ve seen, Indigenous religious  traditions are dynamic and fluid. Sometimes they've fought for their traditions to be recognized by aligning their practices  with the Western construct of “religion. ” But their own languages don’t always have  a word for “religion”—and forcing these diverse traditions into a single  box leaves a lot to be desired.

I would argue that rather than asking communities  to squeeze their belief systems into one definition of religion, we should instead expand  our definition of religion to include the many ways humans have of grappling with kinship,  interpersonal responsibility, and the sacred. So, perhaps the question we should ask is,  “Are these beliefs as real, as important, as any religion—regardless of  whether they carry the label? ” And for that I do have a simple answer: Yes.

Next time, we’ll explore  the complexities of Judaism. I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Religions which was filmed here at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana and was made with the help of all these nice people.

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