The Dynamic Reproduction of Hunter‐Gatherers' Ontologies and Values

Abstract

Recent rereadings of Indigenous animistic traditions and ethnographies as the “relational ontologies” of hunting and gathering societies have brought forward new conceptual avenues which offer anthropologists a better understanding of Indigenous peoples' values, notions of person and self, and ways of being, knowing and acting in the world. The permeable and negotiable character of the ontological boundaries between human and nonhuman agencies is one of these avenues. Considering Indigenous peoples' relations and engagements with institutionalized religions, whose ontological and epistemological principles differ, the chapter will look at some of the avenues that they are exploring in today's context in order to reproduce their own customary and reciprocal responsibilities toward the land, kin networks, ritual practices, and local cosmologies. While such ontological encounters and entanglements may at times be experienced by Indigenous peoples as a form of ontological violence, they do also give way to new cosmological and ritual forms.

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