Twenty-first century cultural and religious diversification of modernity: the example of the shamanic indigenisation of Roman Catholicism among Native American peoples in the Northwest of the United States

Abstract

Modernity and the growing global anxiety it has generated have fostered numbers of ancient and new worships liberated from the control of both rationality and the mainstream religions. An example is the growing shamanic indigenization of missionary Roman Catholicism by Native American communities in the Northwest of the United States. Indigenous and indigenised exogenous urban elements are locally associated in producing spiritual and cultural invention and persistence of tradition through change and innovation. The symbolic efficiency of shamanism integrating more than ever the different elements in modernity, should not be seen as a relic of the past, but as a powerful healing tool for the future.

Keywords

• Anthropology
• development
• modernity
• Native Americans
• religions
• roman catholicism