All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual

In All My Relatives, David C. Posthumus provides a revisionist history of Lakota religion and culture, incorporating insights from the "ontological turn" to explore animist beliefs and their connection to the understanding of the real world. He offers a compelling lens for analyzing traditional Lakota mythology, dreams, visions, and ceremony, providing new insights into indigenous cosmology, ontology, and religion.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 01 May 2022
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

In his groundbreaking work, All My Relatives, David C. Posthumus presents the first revisionist history of the Lakotas religion and culture in a generation. Drawing upon insights from the "ontological turn," particularly the dual notions of interiority/soul/spirit and physicality/body, as proposed by A. Irving Hallowell and Philippe Descola, Posthumus extends the concept of personhood to encompass both humans and nonhumans. This reevaluated animist framework offers a compelling lens through which traditional Lakota mythology, dreams, visions, and ceremonies can be analyzed and fully understood.

Posthumus delves into how Lakota animist beliefs permeate the understanding of the real world in relation to various phenomena, such as the personhood of rocks, ghosts or spirits of deceased humans and animals, meteorological phenomena, familiar spirits or spirit helpers, and medicine bundles. By stripping away the problematic nineteenth-century social evolutionary elements and viewing animism as an ontological or spiritual alternative, All My Relatives provides new insights into traditional Lakota culture for a deeper and more enduring understanding of indigenous cosmology, ontology, and religion.

This innovative work contributes to our understanding of Native American cultures and their complex relationships with the natural world. It challenges traditional narratives and offers a fresh perspective on the rich tapestry of Lakota beliefs and practices. All My Relatives is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in exploring the complexities of indigenous spirituality and culture.

Weight: 460g
Dimension: 153 x 228 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496230393