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Indigenous Spiritualities and Religious Freedom
Jeffery Hewitt (Author), Beverly Jacobs (Author), Richard John Moon (Author)
9781487505295
Hardback, published 29 July 2025
254 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg
Indigenous Spiritualities and Religious Freedom investigates the complex relationship between Indigenous legal orders and Canadian law, emphasizing the richness of Indigenous spiritual practices alongside their historical and ongoing suppression by the Canadian state. It critically examines the role and limitations of the Canadian Charter of Right’s section 2(a), which guarantees freedom of religion, in protecting the spiritual lives of Indigenous communities.
The book highlights the holistic nature of Indigenous spiritual beliefs, which view the spiritual as immanent and closely tied to land and specific locations. The book reveals how, by contrast, the Anglo-American conception of religious freedom often separates spiritual and religious matters from civic and political concerns, and so fails to provide meaningful protection for Indigenous cultural and spiritual practices.
Many essays in this collection propose alternative approaches to the relationship between Canadian law and Indigenous legal orders, particularly regarding Indigenous spiritual practices. Ultimately, Indigenous Spiritualities and Religious Freedom reveals the challenges – and perhaps the futility – of seeking significant protection for Indigenous spiritual practices within the existing framework of religious freedom.
Introduction 1. Water Is Life: Haudenosaunee Responses to Climate Change and Water Security 2. The Gaya’shra’gowa’ in the Twenty-First Century: Traditional Indigenous Governance and the Problem of Canadian Settler Colonial Law 3. An Imaginary for Our Sisters: Spirits and Indigenous Law 4. Indigenous Religious Rights: Reconciling Religious Views and Decolonizing Section 2(a) of the Charter 5. Is State Neutrality Bad for Indigenous Religious Freedom? 6. Ktunaxa and the Shape of Religious Freedom 7. Beyond Experience? Objectivity, Indigeneity, and Freedom of Religion 8. Ancestors in the Land: Indigenous Burial Sites and Religious Freedom 9. Posing the Land Question: An Analysis of Servatius v. Alberni School District No. 70 10. The Perils of Rights and Reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples Contributors
Jeffery Hewitt, Beverly Jacobs, and Richard Moon
Dawn Martin-Hill
Theresa McCarthy
Val Napoleon
Natasha Bakht
Benjamin L. Berger
Richard Moon
John Borrows
Senwung Luk and Howard Kislowicz
Ardith Walkem
Karen Drake