Interfaith America: Can you tell us about your area of study and what inspired you to focus on this for your academic career?
Dr. Abel Gomez: My research looks at the intersection of Indigenous religions, political movements, sacred sites protection movements, gender and sexuality and decolonization. My doctoral degree is in the academic study of religion with a focus on contemporary Native traditions, and more specifically I did my dissertation research on efforts to protect sacred places within the San Francisco/Monterey Bay region which is the territory known collectively today as Ohlone.
My maternal grandparents are from Nicaragua and El Salvador; my father was born in Mexico. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and went to San Francisco State University, where I was involved in Latino, Chicano and LGBT student organizations. During that time, I got to go to this place called Indian Canyon, which is the only federally recognized Indian Country, which is the legal term, between Sonoma and Santa Barbara. I met Ann Marie Sayers, an Ohlone elder, and it was the first time, as far as I knew, I’d met a Native person whose ancestors were from the area where I grew up. It opened up a lot of questions for me, including: what does it mean to be doing academic work and political organization work on Indigenous land, on colonized land? Later, in graduate school, Ohlone revitalization movements became the focus of my work.
IA: What do you think people should know about Indigenous religious traditions as they’re practiced today?
AG: Three words: relationship, responsibility and resurgence. So often Indigenous peoples understand themselves as living in a web of relationships – to other humans, to lands, to waters, and what are often called non-human relatives. This includes plant, animal life, but also various kinds of spiritual beings or creator beings. And those relationships always come with responsibility.
The third R, resurgence, is also really important, because historically, Indigenous peoples were understood by non-Native people to be disappearing, to eventually go extinct. Rather than disappearing in fact there has been an incredible resurgence globally of Native people relearning their languages, relearning their ceremonies and reasserting sovereignty over their traditional territory.
Often Native people fundamentally understand themselves as being from and of a place. In that place, often there’s a sense that that landscape is alive with sacred power.
Often Native people fundamentally understand themselves as being from and of a place. In that place, often there’s a sense that that landscape is alive with sacred power.
All this is really important for non-Native people to understand, because we see in various political movements happening right now, that Native peoples are on the front lines of protecting land and water, and these are not simply natural resources for most Native people but are understood through a fundamentally religious lens of religious obligations, of understanding the sacredness of land and water, of understanding what’s often called the sacred covenant between human beings, creator beings and these ancestral lands and water.
IA: How have Native peoples been included or excluded from interfaith conversations?
AG: Certainly, there is a major presence in international gatherings like the World Parliament of Religions, where Native leaders from around the globe speak about what is happening within their communities and the ongoing impacts of settler colonial occupation.
Also, one way I see interfaith engagement is in political movements. For example, there is a multi-year effort to protect an area in Berkeley known as the West Berkeley Shellmound, which is one of the oldest burial and village sites within the Bay Area. And part of the way that organizers have galvanized support is they’ve actively invited interfaith leaders to join their efforts in protecting this place. In that invitation, there has been a call for interfaith leaders to understand, “your own sacred places are important, your prayer practices are important, so we invite you to pray with us on our sacred site and be part of a reimagining of what this land might look like.”
South of that, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is working with environmental justice organizations to save land in the Santa Cruz mountains.
For Christian groups, this is an important opportunity to really think about how have the traditions that one is involved in actually contributed to Indigenous dispossession. The future is not set, right? All of these movements, whether we’re talking about Standing Rock, whether or efforts in Hawaii to resist the telescope on the sacred mountain Mauna Kea, or resistance to the pipeline Line 3, these are all moments where people can co-envision together the kind of future that we want.
IA: Is it common for people who practice Indigenous religions to also have another religious identity?
AG: There are many people who practice both and don’t necessarily see a conflict. Perhaps it might be best to describe it as a spectrum. There are some who will only practice their traditional ceremonial ways, or what they have access to in terms of traditional ceremony; there are others that are very Christian, are Catholic or Protestant, then there are many that practice a blend of those two. Among Lakota people there is a ceremony known as the Sun Dance, which is a ceremony in which individuals sacrifice pain and suffering for the wellbeing of their community and the earth. Some Lakota have interpreted Jesus as the ultimate Sun Dancer, for example.
IA: Do you see opportunities for people who practice Indigenous religion to take the lead in interfaith engagement?
AG: There is another important element about Native religions that I think is really important to discuss, which is that not all elements of these traditions are meant for public. Part of this resurgence also is about setting the terms about what is shared.
IA: Can you talk about sacred sites? This concept resonates with people of all faiths.
