Pilgrimage and Purpose: Ancestor Research as Sacred Practice in a Secular Age

This paper explores the ways in which ancestor research has become a replacement for religious community and practice in a post-religious world. We explore the parallels of popular present-day family history pursuits with traditional religious practices, noting the similarities in how the practices are used to foster and strengthen feelings of identity, purpose, and belonging. We look at three particular customs that are common to those interested in ancestor research: the handing on of ‘sacred’ stories and objects with familial significance; acts of pilgrimage to ancestrally significant places; and engaging in ‘ritual’ gatherings, either with extended family or with others who share the interest of ancestor research.

Life of a Wildflower: Reimagining Meaningful Learning Through Play-Based Pedagogy

The author explores tensions between teacher-centered styles of teaching and play-based approaches that invite students to be creators of their own learning. Through narrative inquiry, the author uses a metaphor of wildflowers growing in natural environments to explore a child-led process of learning through play that fosters creativity and deep thinking. Teaching Kindergarten for the first time, the author reflects on challenges of living “secret stories” in the classroom that differ from “sacred stories” of the school’s pedagogical practices, feeling a need to create a “cover story” to present her pedagogy as conforming, yet capable and successful.

Treaty Stories: Reclaiming the Unbroken History of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Sovereignty

Ojibwe leaders negotiated treaties with the United States amid nineteenth-century encroachments on their territory. These treaties, which were more than tools of dispossession, enfolded and extended aadizookanag (sacred stories) in agreements that embodied Ojibwe relationships with land, language, sacred history, ceremony, and kin. Federal and state policy makers, fueled by the desire for Indian land and resources, attempted to unravel these relationships in the decades that followed. By continuing to live out through labor and stories their relationships with the woods, waters, and manoomin (wild rice) beds of Anishinaabewaki, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibweg kept their treaties and their sovereignty alive.

Mitos Dan Religi Dalam ‘Geguritan I Dukuh Siladri’ Karya Sastra Kreatif Dan Dinamis

This article is a small part of research report on the oral tradition of ‘Nyurud di Setra’ in the Klungkung-Bali Pakraman community Village Pemenang. One of the subsections reveals the relationship between myth and religion towards the traditional inherentance of Pura Dalem Suladri which is implicitly described in ‘geguritan I Dukuh Siladri’. With the qualitative interpretative descriptive methods, it is understood that religion is one elements of universal culture which containts of beliefs and behavior related to supernatural power and powers. Meanwhile, myth is an important part of human life as a psychological necessity due to woory and fear of the wrath universe. In order for humans to avoid disaster, sacred and sacred stories are about objects that govern the universe are built, strengthened by sacred buildings and religious rituals. Thus, the‘geguritan I Dukuh Siladri’ appears to be a creative and dynamic literary work following the reality cummunity of social life according to the time.

Water stories: deep histories of climate change, ecological resilience and the riverine world of the Cherokees

Cherokee people understand climate change. In their traditional homelands, located in the southern Appalachian Mountains, Cherokees have accumulated vast repositories of knowledge � known as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) � about changes in geology, fluctuations in local ecosystems and the importance of biodiversity. This knowledge, collected and stored in oral traditions, sacred beliefs, and daily life, ensures the resilience of Cherokee communities. Water stories are key to this resilience. As this article reveals, water stories are sacred stories, part of a living body of knowledge that connects the Cherokees to the landscapes and waterscapes of southern Appalachia. Water stories flow through Cherokee scientific and spiritual knowledge. They are stories thousands of years in the making and provide vital insights that can inform the co-governance of rivers and clarify strategies for living in balance and harmony with local ecosystems. In the old stories of the Cherokee people are fresh insights that can guide climate resilience into the future.

Revisiting methodological basis of religiousity research in sports

Sport is still a «blind spot» in religious studies; meanwhile, the phenomenon of modern sport, from the point of view of its sociocultural determination, value and semantic content, is of great interest to the sciences of religious rituals. At first glance, the empirical facts about sport are quite ordinary. For all participants and attentive observers, physical efforts and sport results are fed by carefully constructed worlds of sacred stories, symbols and personal rituals. The increasing number of athletes involved in sports activities claim the priority of spiritual growth in the process of training and competitions over physical metamorphoses. Champions talk frankly about their religious views and demonstrate confessional affiliation, building bridges between personal rituals and their victories or defeats, which makes it possible to think about including sports in the field of religious studies. The objective of the present research is to analyze the theoretical and methodological foundations of studying the phenomenon of athletes’ religious commitment, as well as adapting existing approaches to distinguishing types of religious and non-religious individuals, taking into account the specifics of this group. Based on the results of empirical studies of the last twenty years developed in Russian sociology of religion, the author reveals their potential for solving urgent problems. In this article, the author focuses on the methods of studying the religiosity of modern athletes. One of the problems is the construction of classification demonstrating athletes’ religiosity taking into account the specifics of their activities, as well as the possibilities of representing their beliefs through religious practices before / during / after competitions.