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This chapter concerns claims to the religious in federal Indian law as part of broader claims made in the register of sovereignty. It follows a number of crucial cases that concerned the shape of treaty-protected rights to fishing, hunting, and gathering off-reservation, notably those in the Great Lakes region and the salmon cases in the Pacific Northwest, rulings that cleared the way for the Makah whale hunt. The chapter argues these cases are not simply about political sovereignty or about the economic value of the treaty rights. They are also about the religious and cultural importance of those sacred practices and how the practices themselves constitute peoplehood. It also signals where protecting religion as peoplehood, under international law and especially under federal Indian law, can have its limits, particularly in the short term.

This chapter examines the histories and connections between Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean by focusing on sacred Caribbean dance rituals. It begins with a discussion of African-derived rituals in sacred dance, paying attention to how dance reveals and forwards sacred potential and how a relationship between the sacred and the secular is forged in African Diaspora contexts. It then considers how similar religious and dance structures have emerged across the Diaspora from common beliefs and social conditions that were shared by thousands of Africans. It also explores African-derived sacred dance practices in the Caribbean islands, namely: French/Kreyol, English/Creole, Spanish Caribbean, and Dutch Caribbean sacred practices. Furthermore, it describes compares Atlantic Afro-Latin sacred practices, including those in Brazil, Suriname, and Uruguay. The chapter concludes with Afrogenic comparisons of ritual Diaspora dance.

This chapter discusses a variety of archaeological evidence in order to identify architectural structures characteristic of wetland environments and to try to bridge the gap of archaeological evidence between wetland and dryland occupations. This is done by identifying objects and artefacts, which are not necessarily typical of wetland sites, but have survived due to wet anaerobic conditions, and comparing them with those belonging to distinctive wetland groups. The contents of each section and subsection are organized in a descending chronological order, following, where possible, a west-east, north-south spatial distribution. The discussions cover houses and settlements in the wetlands, contact and transport, material culture, and sacred practices and beliefs in the wetlands.

This chapter addresses the question of how unresolved racial grief works through the demands of capital, racialization, and sacred ritual practice to enact a gender hierarchy. It thinks through James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), to explore how testifying serves as a technology of black patriarchy—a ritual that arises out of the need for racial and economic redemption yet unfolds within and propagates gendered power relations. It examines how the content and structure of Baldwin's Bildungsroman, set in Harlem's Pentecostal community during the Great Depression, allegorizes the conversion of John Grimes, who embodies the “weak, feminine flesh” of his matrilineal line that is sacrificed to secure his “manchild” status of salvation. The chapter is punctuated by a section that situates Baldwin's novel as a form of sexual testifying on the part of Baldwin himself. In doing so, it places Baldwin's novel in conversation with its dramatic sequel, The Amen Corner (1954), to explore how both texts anticipate and extend queer theoretical conversations about the social construction of black, gay subject-formations.