This panel explores the resilient lifeworlds at the heart of human and more-than-human communities across Pasifika’s Ring of Fire and the Baltic region. Together, the papers trace how Indigenous epistemologies, spiritualities, and ecologies endure—and resist—amid ongoing colonial, religious, and developmental pressures. Across these diverse contexts, the session highlights how Indigenous knowledge systems and spiritual ecologies persist and adapt under colonial, religious, and economic pressures. From the endurance of Pasifika cultural practices and the negotiation of digital media by the Baduy, to the systemic marginalization of Indigenous religions in Indonesia and the threatened sacredness of Baltic forests, these papers together illuminate the ongoing struggles—and remarkable resilience—of communities working to sustain their cultural worlds and protect the more-than-human relations that anchor them.
This paper profiles the work of Señot Donald Mendiola, a Chamorro yo‘åmte (healer) in the Northern Mariana Islands. While the paper will highlight Señot Mendiola’s work with traditional healing, it will also explore a vital part of his practice, that of hearing and speaking to the spirits and the taotaomo‘na (the people of before/ancestors). This paper takes as its point of departure the resilience of cultural practices that have survived hundreds of years of colonialism and the potential of these practices to subvert Western epistemologies and ontologies. I argue that the future of my home islands lies in the acquisition and retention of these practices. Because they foreground Indigenous Chamorro epistemology and ontology, they provide alternatives that counter the hegemony of Western knowledge and practices. These practices will help the Indigenous of the Marianas tell different stories about our history and our relationships with our human and other-than-human kin.
Contemporary deforestation in the Baltic countries is driven by the perception that these sparsely inhabited regions are, in fact, Terra Nullius. The earlier authority of the Church, however, has been supplanted by the greed and power of global corporations. With the integration of Baltic countries into the Western market system, the profiteering motives of lumber and related industries are eclipsing the traditional world views rooted as deeply in the land as the great trees being felled. The region as a whole is still perceived as a wilderness sparsely inhabited by pagans and nature-worshippers. The future survival of Baltic forests—and the spiritual life of those nations—depends on recognizing traditional Baltic views of forests as protected and sacred spaces, and defending them from the short-sighted and Utilitarian perspective that the forests must be exploited, their financial value cashed in, and the raw timber made a resource for the privileged West.