Reference no: EM133278523

Question: Both Wessinger and the Cole reading from last Friday try to look at marginalized religious communities by defining/redefining terms like "cult" or "New religious movement." Does this help us better understand groups like ISIS or the Ghost Dancers? Why/why not?

Background: The ghost dance movement was Crisis religion, or to be really more technically accurate, a crisis cold is the term anthropologists use, but we just want our white coats can be a problematic term. But at any rate, a crisis religion is a new religion that is formed in response to some sort of a cute cultural crisis when older meaning systems no longer seem to provide answers.

Typically, this is the response to war or famine, earthquake, or something that has created a crisis that has caused people to question their entire worldview. And so oftentimes crisis religions draw on elements of the form r religion, but also add new teachings to respond to the crisis. And the crisis to which the Ghost Dance was responding was a direct threat to the Native American way of life in the West. You know from American history classes for native peoples in the US, the history of US expansion is their history of the loss of their territories and the loss of their way of life. And while initially settlement into what is currently the US was mostly east of the Mississippi River. And to a certain extent the American Southwest, which had been colonized by Mexico and then gets claimed by the US after wars than treaties. But the central part of the US, the western states, actually were, had relatively few white settlers until the time of the Civil War basically and the aftermath of the Civil War. And so it's this time period that sees a big expansion of westward migration. Especially following, while the gold rush earlier in 1848, following the Homestead Act, which gave white settlers a certain amount of territory, if they would agree to farm on it for seven years. And those territories were largely Indian territories. Also, the completion of the transcontinental railroad made it easier for white settlers to move west.

And so Plains Indian groups who had been able to maintain their culture and way of life for much longer than Native peoples living elsewhere in what is currently the US, suddenly find themselves being displaced onto smaller and smaller territories. Onto reservation systems. So after the Civil War, as said, is when westward expansion really is being driven into Native American territories. And many of the settlers are cattle ranchers because the plain states are not necessarily all good for farming. A lot of it is grassland that's not particularly good for farming, but it is pretty good for cattle ranching. However, cattle ranchers had to compete with the bison population, whoops, the bison population. And so they had a direct interest in killing the bison.

Also, a lot of other interests wanted to tame the bison herds. So prior to white settlement, there were enormous herds of bison that roamed as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico as you can see from this range map here. And they were central to many Plains Indians in terms of their way of life. They were the primary meat source in the diet. They were the primary source of the first use to make their clothing. And the structures that they lived in. Bison bone was used for a lot of their tools. At many Plains, Indian groups were still semi-nomadic and would follow the bison herds. And so folks who thought that it was best for white settlers if Native Americans were forced onto reservations also had a stake in eliminating the bison herds. Native American territory is we're already shrinking after the Civil War. And part of the reason is that the Civil War was the first time that the US had a standing army.