“The sun told me I would be restored to life”: Native American near-death experiences, shamanism, and religious revitalization movements.

Abstract

Near-death experiences (NDEs) were commonly the basis for Native American afterlife beliefs, as can be seen in numerous ethnohistorical documentary accounts spanning the continent. They played a key role in responding to Christian missionary teachings and in negotiating cultural-political threats from European dominance. According to indigenous testimony, whole religious movements originated in NDEs, some of which rejected Christianity or incorporated elements of it. Although religious revitalization movements such as the Ghost Dance have long been studied from sociological and political approaches, the near-death experiential dimension has been widely ignored despite its centrality to them. In an examination of some 25 cases, I redress this omission by demonstrating that Native American religious revitalization movements-and indeed afterlife beliefs per secan be fully understood only by taking NDEs into account alongside socio-political factors.