INTRODUCTION

Stars, ancestors, antelopes and ducks frame Linda Hogan's opening essay. She places the myriad relations of our planetary life in the widest context of a life-giving universe and in the smallest context of intimate kinship. Hogan, a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist and scholar, draws on her rich understanding of varied North American indigenous knowledges and life-ways to present a cautious welcome to renewed academic interest in animism. She recognizes attempts to engage respectfully with what she prefers to call “tradition”. In her estimation this interest in animism “counts for something. Its importance can't be overstated” – and she tells us why. Nonetheless, despite celebrating the growing interest in the larger-than-human relationships to which “animism” can point, she challenges us to face the violent history that has diminished or destroyed many lives.

Hogan's essay “We Call it Tradition” opens this book because it fuses celebration and challenge. It does not survey all the kinds of phenomena that are labelled “animism” but initiates a reconsideration of contemporary and historical indigenous life-ways and knowledges. By inviting us to engage, to relate, to participate, it offers a powerful foundation for the recognition (honoured in many later chapters) that the study of animism is more than the collection, description and analysis of facts about other lives. The approaches to learning and teaching which we adopt and perform are important elements of the relationships we have with the larger community (the world). Studies of animism entail provocative re-evaluations of all ways of being, acting, thinking and relating.