LITR 5731 Seminar in American Multicultural Literature UHCL 2006 sample student research project

LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Student Research Project , spring 2006

This topic pertains to religious syncretism and cultural secrecy in American minorities. My theory is that a subordinate culture will try in many ways – through direct conflict, deception, assimilation or syncretism – to have their native religious traditions and culture “survive” the onslaught of the dominant culture’s powerful & sometimes forced adaptations.

But as we’ve see in some of the course’s pieces of literature, especially in Black Elk Speaks and Bless Me, Ultima, the subordinate culture will adopt many assimilated and enigmatic forms of behaviors (often unfamiliar to the dominant culture) in order to co-exist in a threatening or oppressive environment. For instance, they can choose to (outwardly) adopt the dominant culture’s religion, while (inwardly) serving their native religious traditions and gods. Or they can choose to have their religious traditions “survive” via syncretism – by merging their traditional beliefs with those of the dominant society.

In my opinion, coerced syncretic religious behavior, made under duress (threat of physical harm, loss of livelihood, etc.), can be considered “bartered devotion,” in that it is an attempt by the subordinate minority to maintain or attain certain desired provisions by acquiescing to the dominant culture’s demands. This acquiescence can stretch across an extensive gamut of behaviors – from a sham of a thinly veiled societal façade, to a sincere amalgamation of beliefs, to a total revision of values, and so on.

Even in the absence of direct threats, there are virtual (and literal) mountains of reasons for a subordinate culture to try and climb up the proverbial ‘ladder of success’ of the dominant society. In Race and Ethnic Relations, the author explains that subordinate groups crave the “fullest opportunity for participation in the life of the larger society with a view to uncoerced incorporation into that society” (pg. 57). But minority groups are “rarely completely absorbed into dominant group,” totally relinquishing their culture and physical identity (pg 57). So syncretism is a way for minorities to pursue required and/or desired provisions while maintaining (some portion) of their cultural identity. And as minorities attain higher degrees of assimilation in a dominant culture, they can attain entrance into institutions and social cliques, plus achieve decreased levels of prejudice, discrimination, and value and power conflicts, according to Marger (pg. 113).

Let us now review how African slaves dealt with living in an oppressive environment, yet still retained their ability to re-ignite their native religious traditions and merge them with New World beliefs.

Slavery forced the dispersion of Africans to the New World (mainly North America, South America and the Caribbean). An estimated half million Africans were brought to the United States over the course of 200 years. But while the slave trade caused the loss of family ties, and innumerable social and economic hardships, Africans clung to their religious beliefs and traditions. But under such extreme oppression, African slaves were forced to reshape and reform some of their traditions in order to have them survive at all.

Slaves could deceive their white masters by leading their social lives in the way that whites deemed fit on the surface, but then expressing their inner beliefs in ways that whites were not able to detect or comprehend. We read a probable example of this in Jupiter Hammon’s poem, “An Evening Thought,” where the slave writes how God’s grace is granted (equitably) to “every one” and “every Nation.” He ignites religious fervor and (presumably) emboldens slave to action by writing: “Now is the Day, excepted Time” and “Awake Ye, Every Nation.” These double-entendre religious writings used a vehicle of the white dominant culture – Christian hymns and poems –as a safe means of communicating a sense of African alliance/allegiance, while surreptitiously strategizing an insurrection.

Another example can be found in Christian services. White masters did not allow the slaves to play drums, so they substituted handclapping and foot stomping in order to retain and evoke the atmosphere of their religious practices. This practice can be found in many African-American churches today.

In large part, African spirituality was altered, often via syncretism, with traditions of the slaves' masters, and yet still able to grab many native religious “footholds” in other religions (like Catholic’s celebration of saints and votive offerings). Let’s now explore some of these altered – syncretic – religions.

With certainty, it would prove an impossible task to list all minority-led syncretic religions found in America today in this brief research piece, so I have only focused on some of the more prominent faiths as examples and provided extremely condensed summaries. (Unless otherwise noted, the following “Syncretic Religion’s” research was derived and summarized from Wikipedia and/or the religious organization’s Website.)

The Yoruba culture of Nigeria, Benin and neighboring areas greatly influenced African religion. The major faith found among the Yoruba people is called Ifa, which is actually a name for God, (a.k.a. Olorun or Olodumare). Orishas are the deities worshipped in the Ifa movement.

This movement evolved mainly in Cuba and is now found throughout the Americas, especially in large metropolitan and immigrant-laden areas such as Los Angeles, Miami and New York City. The religion is perhaps most well known for its ritual sacrifice of animals (mainly chickens), but is relatively similar to other Ifa traditions.

In the Congo, Zaire and Angola, the Bantu people began what’s practiced mainly in areas of Brazil and Cuba as Kongo, but is also known as Palo Monte, Palo Mayombe, Xango (Shango), Quimbanda, Umbanda, etc.

Rasta, or the Rastafari movement, is a religious movement that believes Haile Selassie, a former Ethiopian emperor, is God incarnate. The term “Rastafari” comes from “Ras (Duke) Tafari Makonnen,” the pre-coronation name of the emperor. Today there are over one million Rastafari, including some 5-10% of Jamaicans. Most Rastafarians are vegetarians and live by the dietary code found in the Bible’s Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Perhaps the most notorious movement of African spirituality in the New World is Vodou, also known as Vodun, Voodoo or Vodoun. Vodun is practiced in Benin, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Haiti, Togo and areas in the US - largely where Haitian refuges have settled. There is a syncretism between African gods and Catholic saints in the system of Voodoo, so slaves in areas like New Orleans practiced Voodoo, blending Catholic and African religious rites and practices.

The most well known Voodoo priestess was Marie Laveau, who was among the first people to publicly mix African traditions of voodoo and Catholicism, as she herself was a Roman Catholic. For example, she brought Catholic sainthood into Voodoo ceremonies, as she created St. Peter Papa LaBas, who is a Voodoo trickster god of the crossroads. There were also other Voodoo-created saints, like St. Marron (the patron saint of swamps where runaway slaves would live together). Much like a Catholic ceremony, Marie Laveau used candles, a statue of the Virgin Mary and incense, but also food offerings, and a caged snake, on her Voodoo altar.

For example, the freed and enslaved blacks would participate in the public Congo Square dances, but the “real” traditional and magic-laden Voodoo celebrations would be held in private at Marie’s home. This is another example of how slaves learned to keep their traditions alive under the constraints of their white masters.

The Sea Islands of the South are a chain of small islands off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Today the Sea Islands retain a predominantly African American population that has developed a distinctive culture and dialect known as Gullah or Geechee.

Ronald Dasie, a Gullah translator and author of Reminiscences of Sea Island Heritage: Legacy of Freedman on St. Helena Island, writes: " Today, Gullah denotes a way of life for a peculiar and special group of African Americans who have maintained the purest forms of African mores in this country... Gullah bonds its speakers with others of the African Diaspora. About 90 percent of the vocabulary is English, but the grammatical and intonational features are largely West African. Our West African forebears skillfully developed Gullah as a communication system effective enough to make themselves understood in a strange land where even their talking drums were prohibited…They've maintained their African-born speech patterns and customs because the un-bridged waterways isolated them from the mainland for years" (pg 3).

It’s interesting to note that plantation owners in the Gullah region built Christian “Praise Houses” as a means of social control. The Praise Houses, however, provided a meeting place for the slaves’ spiritual guidance and group leadership. Their religion, a blend of both the ideologies of the Baptist Church and African heritage, remains as the very basis of Gullah culture, according to Daise – so much so that the Gullah express time in terms of before or after they "had sense" (i.e. the completion of the Praise House). Gullah’s still use many traditional West African beliefs – such as “the shout,” a counter-clockwise handclapping and foot stomping dance, and superstitious beliefs (graveyards are located near water to ensure that spirits will travel back to African ancestors; and broken dishes, shells and shiny objects are placed on graves to prevent the dead from returning for their personal belongings, etc.).

The Bahai believe in a prophet named Bahaullah who they consider as a successor to Muhammed. Followers recognize Jesus, Moses, Buddha and Zoroaster and other prophets as well, making it a truly syncretic faith. But many Bahai’ would reject this notion, because they feel that their revelation is supreme over previous ones. They also have their own unique laws and writings that overule all other religious belief systems.

Candomble’ is practiced mainly in Barzil, and many followers have not only African, but also European, lineage. The religion was originally used by the slaves and banned by the Catholic church, but somehow it has survived over four centuries. In recent surveys, according to Wikipedia, about 2 million Barzilians (1.5% of the population) have declared Candomble’ as their religion.

Candomble’ was influenced by Catholic “irmandades” (brotherhoods) of Brazilian slaves that were organized by the Catholic church in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. These groups were organized along ethnic languages, in order to allow preaching in the slaves’ native tongues. This, in fact, backfired, and proved to be a good “cover” for slave reunions, and may even have aided the religion’s establishment.

Apparently, Candomblé adroitly moves between Christainity and combinations of African and Native American gods. Christian crosses are displayed in temples, and African gods are likened to Catholic saints. Based on some historical accounts, Christian devotional altars were used in early slave houses to hide African icons and ritual objects, and Candomblé dances (in honor of Catholic saints) was used as subterfuge and to avoid any direct confrontation.

African and African-derived religions bear remarkable similarities with Native American religions and Shamanism. Shamanism, for instance, is a spirituality using magic and an ecstatic trance state to heal and control fire, wind or magical flight, according to Dance of the Deer Foundation. Like other African-derived religions and Catholicism, the shaman makes use of spirit helpers and altered states of consciousness (somewhat akin to Christianity’s speaking in tongues).

But overall, what may be most striking and interesting to note among Native American religions is that there seems to be very little evidence of exclusivity, individuality or doctrinal superiority in their religious syncretism. You certainly get the feeling that Native Americans (particularly) move comfortably between and among various religious faiths and belief systems.

The syncretism of religions can have wonderful, but novel and unanticipated, “side effects.” For instance, the newly created literature, songs and poems can serve to “preserve” ancient, native stories, myths and culture.

In The Jesus Road, the authors write how Christian hymns sung in the Kiowa language provided a reservoir of tribal history for the Kiowa Comanche Apache Indians (pg. 81). But the hymns also “transmitted power to singers and listeners by connecting them with Kiowa who have died and whom the Kiowa believe to be more holy or ‘Godly’ than people in the present” (p. 81). In the hymns, God is “thickly robed” as Daw Kee (a Kiowa name for Jehovah) and Jesus appears as Daw Kee's son, but they contain no trace of Christian ethics or nature of the universe tales.

In Black Elk Speaks, we see the ease with which Black Elk (rather unquestioningly) accepts that the great Christian Wanekia (Savior) is “really the son of the Great Spirit,” and would appear to the Indians next time, and Black Elk even thought the white man’s Wanekia was a red man he had seen in a vision (pg. 181 & 190).

In “Black Elk and the Jesuits,” Enochs explains how the Lakota Indians’ views of rituals, helper spirits, justification and salvation were similar to Catholic beliefs, and “the Jesuits used these similarities to draw the Lakotas into the Catholic faith” (pg. 283). Some examples include:

q Helper spirit (Lakota) or guardian Angel/ Mother Mary (Catholics) to give assistance & to whom they could pray;

q Sacrifice was key to both – a flesh and blood in the Sun Dance; Christ as a sacrifice.

Native Americans assimilated many of the faiths and traditions that surrounded them – much like Mexican-Americans, who also utilized both their native and New World beliefs simultaneously. We see strong examples of this syncretism in Rudolfo Ananya’s novel, Bless Me, Ultima, which we’ll review next.

Hispanic syncretism in Catholicism can be seen early on in the story of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, in that the brown-skinned Virgin appears to a poor, common Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531 (Anthology of American Literature). The poor peasant was canonized as a saint in 2002 for receiving the vision of the Virgin and facilitating, according to Pope John Paul II, the “fruitful meeting of two worlds” and the “catalyst for a new Mexican identity” (New York Times, August 2002, Bruni). The Pope also presented Diego as a model of integration of differing traditions: “In accepting the Christian message without forgoing his indigenous identity, Juan Diego discovered the profound truth of the new humanity, in which we are all called to be children of God,” according to the New York Times article.

But syncretism can also be found in Mexican-American literature. For instance, in Ananya’s novel, Bless Me, Ultima, we follow the lives of recent Mexican immigrants living in New Mexico. We see glimpses of religious syncretism through Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Ultima is revered, but oftentimes socially rejected, and is sometimes even referred to as a witch. But she seemingly ignores the outside world, effortlessly gliding from one religion to another, taking the “best of both worlds” to make her powerful magic.

For instance, we see Ultima’s healing of a fever through her blending American and curandera ointments and medicaments, using “Vicks and her many herbs” (pg. 712). The author also uses liberal references to the Holy Trinity in the use of the number three: the three sisters who attacked Antonio’s uncle (pg.88), the three clay voodoo-like dolls (pg. 101), the three bundles to burn in the fire in order to release a curse (pg. 232), and Antonio’s three brothers, which he sees in his visions (pg. 234).

In the U.S. today, one of every seven people in the country identify themselves as Hispanic, which accounts for about half of the country’s growth since 2000 – that’s 41 million people of Latin American and Caribbean origin, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So clearly the syncretic effect of such a huge migration of Hispanic culture on U.S. religious movements has yet to be fully understood or calculated.

In conclusion, one of the most compelling reasons behind syncretism is a minority’s wish to gain acceptance, provisions, power and equity in the dominant culture. Plus, when you realize that many religions – typically outside the Muslim and Christian order – do not view their religious faiths as mutually exclusive, it’s reasonable that they could accept and envelop new ideologies. This can, in and of itself, provide a compelling reason behind many minorities’ liberal dosage of baptisms and mass exodus to Christian-led beliefs. Indeed, polytheist religions and multi-ethnic regions seem to have a more “naturally inclusive” nature than the centralized, strongly monotheistic religions of the Old World.

So in the end, syncretism may well be a well-flexed double-edged sword: While it allows the subordinate culture to survive under the often-harsh environment of the dominant group, it also serves to relentlessly alter and excise valuable indigenous traditions from its cultural system.

q Bruni, Frank and Ginger Thompson, “Bolstering Faith of Indians, Pope Gives Mexico a Saint,” New York Times, August 1, 2002.

q Daise, Ronald, Reminiscences of Sea Island Heritage: Legacy of Freedman on St. Helena Island, Sandlapper Publishing, 1998.

q Dance of the Deer Foundation, Shamanism, www.shamanism.com.

q Enochs, Ross, “Black Elk and the Jesuits,” The Black Elk Reader, Syracuse University Press, 2000.

q Hammon, Jupiter, “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries,” African-American Literature sub-page: www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/aframlit.htm.

q Lauter, Paul, ed., “History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadeloupe in 1531,” Heath Anthology of American Literature, Fourth Edition, Vol.1, 2002,

q Luke Eric Lassiter, Clyde Ellis, and Ralph Kotay. The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity, and Indian Hymns, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

q Marger, Martin, Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives, Wadworth/Thomson Learning, 2003.

q Wikipedia, “Syncrectic Religions,” www.wikipedia.com.