Unknown - Amerindian Rebirth

Amerindian Rebirth Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit

Until now few people have been aware of the prevalence of belief in some form of rebirth or reincarnation among North American native peoples. This collection of essays by anthropologists and one psychia-trist examines this concept among native American societies, from near the time of contact until the present day.

Amerindian Rebirth opens with a foreword by Gananath Obeyesekere that contrasts North American and Hindu/Buddhist/Jain beliefs. The introduction gives an overview, and the first chapter summarizes the context, distribution, and variety of recorded belief. All the papers chronicle some aspect of rebirth belief in a number of different cultures. Essays cover such topics as seventeenth-century Huron eschatology, Winnebago ideology, varying forms of Inuit belief, and concepts of rebirth found among subarctic natives and Northwest Coast peoples. The closing chapters address the genesis and anthropological study of Amerindian reincarnation. In addition, the possibility of evidence for the actuality of rebirth is addressed. Amerindian Rgbirth will further our understanding of concepts of self-identity, kinship, religion, cosmology, resiliency, and change among native North American peoples.

ANTONIA MILLS has a joint appointment with the Department of Psychiatric Medicine and the Anthropology Department, University of Virginia.

RICHARD SLOBODIN is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, McMaster University.

This page intentionally left blank

Amerindian Rebirth:

Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit

E D I T ED BY A N T O N IA MILLS

A ND R I C H A RD SLOBODIN

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1994

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada

ISBN 0-8020-2829-2 (cloth) ISBN o-8o20-77O3-x (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Amerindian rebirth : reincarnation belief among

North American Indians and Inuit

In part papers presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Montreal, 1990. Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-2829-2 (bound). - ISBN o-8o20-7703-x (pbk.)

i. Indians of North America - Religion and mythology - Congresses. 2. Inuit - Religion and mythology - Congresses. 3. Reincarnation - Congresses. I. Mills, Antonia Curtze. II. Slobodin, Richard, 1915-Society. Meeting (1990 : Montreal, Quebec).

. ill. Canadian Anthropology

E98.R3A54 1994

299.7

C93-095107-7

The cover illustration is from a silk screen print entitled Limxooy by Ken Mowatt. Used by permission of the artist.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword: Reincarnation Eschatologies and the Comparative Study of Religions xi Gananath Obeyesekere

1 Introduction 3 Antonia Mills

2 Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit:

Context, Distribution, and Variation 15

Antonia Mills

3 Saving the Souls: Reincarnation Beliefs of the Seventeenth-Century

Huron 38

Alexander von Gernet

4 The Reincarnations of Thunder Cloud, A Winnebago Indian 55

Paul Radin

5 Behind Inupiaq Reincarnation: Cosmological Cycling 67

Edith Turner

6 From Foetus to Shaman: The Construction of an Inuit Third

Sex 82

Bernard Saladin dAnglure

7 Born-Again Pagans: The Inuit Cycle of Spirits 107

Lee Guemple

vi Contents

8 The Name Never Dies: Greenland Inuit Ideas of the Person 123

Mark Nuttall

9 Kutchin Concepts of Reincarnation 136

Richard Slobodin

10 Reincarnation as a Fact of Life among Contemporary Dene

Tha 156

Jean-Guy A. Goulet

11 The Concept of the Person and Reincarnation among the Kwakiutl

Indians 177

Marie Mauze

12 Person, Time, and Being: Northwest Coast Rebirth in Comparative

Perspective 192

Michael E. Harkin

13 Rebirth and Identity: Three Gitksan Cases of Pierced-Ear Birthmarks 211

Antonia Mills

14 Cultural Patterns in Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation among the

Tlingit Indians of Southeastern Alaska 242

Ian Stevenson

15 Alternate-Generation Equivalence and the Recycling of Souls:

Amerindian Rebirth in Global Perspective 263

James G. Matlock

16 The Study of Reincarnation in Indigenous American Cultures:

Some Comments 284

Richard Slobodin

Appendix. A Trait Index to North American Indian and Inuit Reincarnation Sources 299

James G. Matlock and Antonia Mills

References 357

Culture Index 391

General Index 395

Contributors 409

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Dr Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia for renewing and to some extent guiding my interest in reincarnation belief and possible actualities. I am also happy to thank the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, of which Dr Stevenson is Director, for their kind hospitality and provision of facilities.

It was Dr Antonia Mills who introduced me to the fascinating enter-prise of editing the present collection. Throughout this project she has remained an ever-cheerful and resourceful partner.

I wish also to acknowledge the assistance of the Arts Research Board, McMaster University, in providing a travel subvention that facilitated preparation of the manuscript.

Richard Slobodin Dundas, Ontario

I would like to thank Dr Richard Slobodin for his great assistance in editing this book, and each of the contributors. My thanks go to James G. Matlock for preparing the Index of the text and for his considerable input on this project. I am very grateful to Dr Stevenson not only for introducing me to his case-study approach, but also for bringing me to the University of Virginia, and for making available to me, through my position at the Division of Personality Studies, resources which have been used in the preparation of this book (including the assistance of three work-study students, Jody Schubert in 1990-1, Kristen Weiss in 1991-2, and Edward Abse in 1992). I thank my daughter Juniper Ridington for assisting me in the summer of 1991, and especially the Beaver

viii Acknowledgments

(Deneza) Gitksan and Wetsuweten who have participated in the reincarnation research. I am grateful for a two-year post-doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Cana-da, which funded me to do field research on reincarnation belief with the Beaver, Gitksan, and Wetsuweten, and to the Division of Personality Studies for funding field research in 1984 and 1990. It has been a pleasure to work on this book.

Antonia Mills Charlottesville, Virginia

This collection of essays developed out of a session on Native North American reincarnation beliefs at the May, 1990, annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society / Societe Canadienne dAnthropologie (CASCA). The session was organized by Antonia Mills; other participants were Edith Turner, Jean-Guy Goulet, Lee Guemple, and Richard Slobodin. In November 1991 James G. Matlock organized a session on reincarnation for the American Anthropological Association meetings held in Chicago, where Michael Harkin first presented his essay.

When we decided to attempt a volume of essays on the topic, there was a gratifying response from other anthropologists interested in the subject. Besides papers by the participants in the CASCA meeting, included are other essays written for this volume by James Matlock, Mark Nuttall, and Alexander von Gernet, as well as material previously published by Paul Radin. The chapter by Bernard Saladin dAnglure is a translation and condensation of an article originally published in French. Richard Slobodin has added Afterthoughts to his article of 1970, and Ian Stevenson has added Afterthoughts to his article of 1966. Marie Mauze has expanded an essay originally presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in 1988.