Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit
uria For the AAR 2025 in Boston, we particularly welcome Indigenous paper and panel proposals relating to any of the following topics:
- Institutional change in terms of programs for teaching and researching Indigenous Religious Traditions.
- War on immigrants, safety and sanctuary, societal change, protection of vulnerable populations. Possible co-sponsorship with Human Rights Unit, Religion and Migration Unit,
- Safety in the Academy: Reckoning, Public institutions responsibility, and working ethically with undocumented students. The examination of Indigenous communal initiatives to undermine any violence against Indigenous immigrants, the Lands, waters, and other-than-human beings.
- Extraction: its meaning, methods, politics, and economics in the study of religion. We invite papers that explore how rights language can function as a vehicle for protecting non-human entities ranging from animals to ecosystems; views of Nature, including climate change, water protectors, and the intersections between religion and contemporary movements such as the Rights of Nature Movement and the Non-human Rights Project; and the intersections of Indigenous religions Nature. Possible Co-sponsored session with Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit, Religion and Ecology Unit, and Native Traditions of the Americas Unit, International Development and Religion Unit
- Sustaining Environmental Change: In the face of climate disaster, how do we make sense of survival of ourselves and the planet, and environmental justice about cultural and spiritual beliefs and ceremonial practices? Currently, the earth is in an apparent radical transition, resisting and responding to human impact in myriad tumultuous ways. Yet, it is clear that if we do not collectively alter our ways of being by supporting the futurity of ecology and sustainability in the continuation of human and planetary existence, we will evidence greater loss of life, our planetary home, and culture.
- "Author Meets Critic Series" Any significant books published in the last three years relevant for discussion by a diverse group of scholars? Suggest them to us!
The Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit invites papers, regardless of fitting a specific call above, highlighting any concerns about Indigenous rights, the preservation of Indigenous languages and traditions, food sovereignty, rematriation, White supremacist blood and soil ideologies, and any other topics around the restoration of ownership to traditional Indigenous communities, and Indigenous futurism and settler futures in terms of reparations, etc. We especially encourage papers exploring the movement's broad perspective regarding restitution, decoloniality, and protection of traditions, lands, ecosystems, and relations.
Method of Submission: PAPERS
The Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit welcomes any theoretical, methodological, and conceptual proposals in the study of Indigenous religious traditions the world over. We are concerned with the interface of Indigenous religious traditions and modernity, colonial and postcolonial conditions, and local and global forces that shape the practice of Indigenous traditions and their categorizations. Though particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Indigenous religions, we are primarily grounded in the “history of religions” approach as it concerns the analysis of Indigenous traditions. We also emphasize Indigenous Methodologies among other Humanities and Social Sciences approaches. We strive for increasingly global perspectives with representation of Indigenous Peoples and traditions from all continents. Similarly, we aspire to include other, more-innovative and less conventional modes of scholarship enhancing our inclusion of creative, embodied, virtual, digital, and public-facing work.