Identifications totémiques : réflexions sur la relation entre humains et entités surnaturelles chez les Salish centraux de la côte
Nowadays, many indigenous people living in the Vancouver area, on Central Coast Salish territories, can claim to have a special relationship with a supernatural entity, often a non-human animal species, a vegetal species, or an element of the landscape. The purpose of this article is to highlight th...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société des américanistes
2015-12-01
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| Series: | Journal de la Société des Américanistes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/14319 |
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| Summary: | Nowadays, many indigenous people living in the Vancouver area, on Central Coast Salish territories, can claim to have a special relationship with a supernatural entity, often a non-human animal species, a vegetal species, or an element of the landscape. The purpose of this article is to highlight the different modalities of this identification with a protective non-human being, and it takes as its starting point hesitations, difficulties, and inaccuracies that occur when one tries to define such identification. By doing so, we outline a real « totemic complex », i.e. a floating structure allowing several possible relationships with a non-human. This paper therefore proposes to reconsider the question of totemism among the Coast Salish people, and to show how it can be deepened if totemism is apprehended as a relational and flexible « complex », involving several possible relational and consistent combinations with a supernatural being. |
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| ISSN: | 0037-9174 1957-7842 |