Published: Sept. 30, 2016
Joe Brusky ThinkPress pic from Dakota Access Pipeline protest

CNAIS Core Faculty and CU Religious Studies Professor Greg Johnson was interviewed for a recent ThinkPress article on the intersections between environmental protests and indigenous spiritual beliefs:

 

Religion has long been a part of Native American protest movements, as has its connection to the environmentalist struggle. But religious scholars say they’re also seeing something unusual this year: demonstrators are actively creating new religious expressions. Greg Johnson, a Hawaiian religion expert and an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said these indigenous protests are increasingly led by young, creative organizers who are “generating” religion through their activism. “The kids of today’s generation know a new set of chants, a new set of prayers because of those who came before them,” Johnson said. He noted that Native Hawaiian schoolchildren are already singing songs written in the protest camps of Mauna Kea just a year before. “In this moment of crisis, the religious tradition is catalyzed, activated, but most of all articulated — this is when it happens.”

Read author Jack Jenkins full article from ThinkPress.Org here:

The growing indigenous spiritual movement that could save the planet

North Dakota is just the beginning.