Deck 2: Indigenous Religions: North America and Africa

Question 1

What does the following Key Term mean:
-Ghost Dance

Answer 1

A religious movement beginning in 1870 involving Native North Americans who believed that by doing the Ghost Dance, they would be liberated from white oppression.

Question 2

What does the following Key Term mean:
-indigenous people

Answer 2

The original or native inhabitants of a region

Question 3

What does the following Key Term mean:
-magic

Answer 3

The attempt to control events through supernatural or mysterious means

Question 4

Which of these views is common among indigenous religions?

A) monotheism
B) agnosticism
C) animism
D) polygenesis

Question 5

A common method for divination in indigenous religions is

A) using sacred sites for information about a tribe's destiny
B) reading the future in patterns found in nature
C) using metal rods to detect minerals beneath the topsoil
D) interpreting visions from a peyote ceremony

Question 6

In what decade did the Massacre at Wounded Knee occur?

A) 1710
B) 1850
C) 1950
D) 1890

Question 7

Which of these is not listed as a "positive" stereotype of Native Americans by scholar Frederick W. Turner?

A) The Indian was the original ecologist
B) The Indian was the original communist
C) The Indian was noncompetitive
D) The Indian was the original hunter

Question 8

Who had a vision of the Supreme Being who told him that through religious rites such as the Ghost Dance and ritual singing, Indians could raise the dead and free the land of whites?

A) Black Elk
B) Sitting Bull
C) Wavoka
D) Si Tanka

Question 9

Clair Farrer describes contemporary Native American peoples on reservations in the American West and Southwest as living in the _____________

A) mythic past
B) mythic present
C) sacred time
D) ethnographic present

Question 10

Haudenosaunee is the Native name for the

A) Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy
B) Lakota Sioux
C) Ghost Dance
D) Massacre at Wounded Knee

Question 11

A common element in Native American beliefs is the

A) creation myth
B) White Buffalo Woman
C) myth of the afterlife
D) belief in reincarnation

Question 12

The "sky vault" is a feature of which creation story?

A) the Sioux
B) the Apache
C) the Cherokee
D) the Iroquois

Question 13

The "council tree" is a feature of which creation story?

A) the Cherokee
B) the Iroquois
C) the Apache
D) the Sioux

Question 14

In which tribe's myth did animals hold a council at which they decided to give man a multitude of diseases and conditions?

A) the Cherokee
B) the Iroquois
C) the Apache
D) the Sioux

Question 15

What do Lakota Sioux call their "Sacred Pipe"?

A) docta ignorantia
B) Tunkashila
C) Chanunpa
D) wakan

Question 16

This Iroquois creation narrative begins with the story of how the whole earth grew from a bit of soil placed on the back of a giant _______.

A) turtle
B) buffalo
C) coyote
D) bear

Question 17

In many African indigenous religions, ________ are to be venerated and appeased through ceremony, for they can help or harm the living, depending on the latter's behavior and commitments.

A) ancestors
B) animals
C) sacred sites
D) gods and goddesses

Question 18

African religions generally are attuned to which of these?

A) the rituals, practices, and attitudes that make up the spiritual life
B) the written creeds and doctrines of the religion
C) the material dimension of religion
D) the patterns in nature that help predict future events

Question 19

In what year did the UN General Assembly adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

A) 1965
B) 2013
C) 1980
D) 2007

Question 20

_____________ is a religious movement beginning in 1870 involving Native North Americans who believed that by practicing it, they would be liberated from white oppression.

A) The Four Directions
B) The Circle Dance
C) The Ghost Dance
D) The White Buffalo Movement

Question 21

According to ________ myth, there is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything-animals, plants, and people-save that the seasons are different.

A) Cherokee
B) Chumash
C) Oglala
D) Sioux

Question 22

Historically, Native North American people mostly conveyed their religious views through _______.

A) rituals
B) oral narrative
C) written text
D) riddles

Question 23

Joseph Akinyele Omoyajowo examines the possibility of an increased emphasis on _________ elements in African indigenous religions.

A) ritual
B) feminine
C) textual
D) historical

Question 24

It may not be a wild assumption to conclude that in traditional Yoruba society, with all its prejudices against women, _________ , more than any other factor, plays a major role in ascribing status to women.

A) men
B) political structure
C) religion
D) the colonial state

Question 25

Africa is home to____________, nearly every form of ecological niche found on Earth, and hundreds of ethnic groups who together speak more than a thousand languages.

A) more than fifty countries
B) one indigenous religion
C) religious-based democracies
D) fewer than five countries

Question 26

The separation between ________ and _________, championed in one form or another in nearly all Western democracies, is predicated on a particular vision of religion as something that can be extracted from public life and quarantined in its own sphere.

A) religion, government
B) sacred, profane
C) masculine, feminine
D) politics, everyday life

Question 27

Among the Ndembu of Zambia, ________ is seen primarily not as something that resides within the body but rather as a communal condition caused by imbalances in relationships with spirits, kinfolk, and members of one's community.

A) malice
B) illness
C) the soul
D) spirituality

Question 28

In many African communities ____________ are qualified to navigate the delicate moral and social balance between the good and evil forces exerted on the human realm.

A) newly birthed babies
B) certain clan outsiders
C) medicine men and women
D) witches

Question 29

Traditional healers and diviners of South Africa are called

A) yorubamen
B) sangomas
C) shamans
D) bantus

Question 30

The integrated worldviews of many African religions lead practitioners to speak about the ________ in tandem with the _______.

A) sangomas, people
B) political, individual
C) nature of humans, environment
D) visible, invisible

Question 31

Sacred myths pertaining to the creation of the universe are called __________.

A) cosmogonic myths
B) narrative myths
C) cosmic myths
D) life cycle myths

Question 32

In contrast to Western religious traditions, many African cosmologies posit that the _______ and the ________ are both divine abodes in which creation and divine action take place.

A) home, church
B) private, public
C) sky, earth
D) universe, mind

Question 33

Contrary to popular beliefs about how time is conceived of in African festivals, they celebrate historical events such as the acts of kings and famous conquests and should be understood as practicing a _______ view of time.

A) mythic
B) cyclical
C) linear
D) multidimensional

Question 34

The original or native inhabitants of a region are called

A) the first humans
B) the peoples of the land
C) native indians
D) indigenous peoples

Question 35

Which of these misconceptions has not been applied to indigenous religions?

A) primitive
B) archaic
C) basic
D) unorganized

Question 36

Which of these descriptions does not apply to indigenous religions?

A) distinguished by intricate metaphysics
B) elaborate and sophisticated
C) simple and one-dimensional
D) having mature moral theories

Question 37

Much as with major world religions, what is the purpose of many indigenous stories?

A) to convey standards of proper behavior
B) to teach adherents to spread the religion in other areas
C) to explain the idea of reincarnation
D) to gain converts without missionizing

Question 38

In many native traditions that are animistic, the world is thought to be filled with entities that have ________.

A) use for agriculture
B) spirit animals
C) consciousness
D) no place in the natural world

Question 39

Some scholars estimate that at the time of Columbus's arrival in the New World, _____ to _____ million indigenous people lived in the Americas.

A) 10, 15
B) 40, 50
C) 5, 8
D) 15, 20

Question 40

In what year did the Massacre at Wounded Knee occur?

A) 1890
B) 1950
C) 1830
D) 1710

Question 41

________ of Native Americans have been around since the Europeans first arrived in the Americas

A) Distorted images
B) Mascots and appropriation
C) Positive images
D) Images portraying Christian ideals

Question 42

During special festivals, especially the Annual ______ Festival, the Yoruba priestess brings messages from the divinity to the entire community or to individuals within and outside the community.

A) New Year
B) Ancestor
C) Water
D) Yam

Question 43

What is the estimated percentage of membership the Yoruba religion has lost during the last half century?

A) about 80 percent
B) about 10 percent
C) about 40 percent
D) about 95 percent

Question 44

Indigenous traditions are basically the same whether they are from Australia, Peru, or Africa.

Question 45

Magic is the power to control events through supernatural or mysterious means.

Question 46

Some scholars estimate that at the time of Columbus's arrival in the New World, forty to fifty million indigenous people lived in the Americas, representing hundreds of tribes and perhaps as many as two thousand distinct languages.

Question 47

Indigenous traditions have a common conception of a supreme being or ultimate power.

Question 48

Indigenous people study the formations of birds in flight, quartz crystals, or animal entrails to predicuture events.

Question 49

Myths of North America never accounor the origins of subsistence activities like hunting and farming.

Question 50

There is a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane in indigenous religions.

Question 51

In 15,000-20,000 BCE people now called Native Americans arrive in North America.

Question 52

The negative stereotype of the bigot portrays Native Americans as violent, inhuman, illiterate "savages" who can be killed and caged with impunity.

Question 53

All stereotypes, negative or positive, fail to see Native Americans as fully real human beings.

Question 54

The Aztec and Mayan civilizations of Central America never developed systems of writing.

Question 55

There is no technology allowed on Indian reservations in the United States. This allows them to live aparrom the contemporary world.

Question 56

The Sky Vault is a world inhabited by men, animals, and plants.

Question 57

As with the many volumes of sacred writings found in the major world religions, written materials by or about Native North Americans are abundant.

Question 58

According to Clair Farrer, time has a different character, a different dimension, on Indian reservations than it does in mainstream American life.

Question 59

The Iroquois myth of creation includes Ata-en-sic, the Sky Woman.

Question 60

According to Evan Pritchard, understanding Native American spirituality is just like understanding Christianity or some other major religion.

Question 61

There is no such thing as "the African religion."

Question 62

According to Article 3 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, indigenous peoples do not have the right to self-determination and must become modernized.

Question 63

The Yoruba of Nigeria, whose progenitor god was likely female, include female deities in their pantheon.

Question 64

In every Yoruba community, there is an elaborate code of manners and etiquette, observance of which helps to reduce the strains and frustrations of interpersonal relationships.

Question 65

Religious worldviews, often unique to distinct ethnic groups, reflect people's identities and lie at the heart of how they relate to one another, to other people, and to the world at large.

Question 66

African religious worldviews are kept strictly separate from economics and politics on the continent.

Question 67

In many traditional African governments, civic authorities were-and in some cases still are-believed to be semidivine.

Question 68

In African religions communities maintain religious edicts through observance of taboos and ritual practices guided by priests, kings, and chiefs.

Question 69

Leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament in South Africa, there were popular assertions that the South African sangomas, the traditional healers and diviners, would magically have an impact on the outcome of the games.

Question 70

African cosmologies portray the universe as closed and separated, with agents from each realm unable to interact with one another.

Question 71

In African religions certain herbs are sacred, and pharmacological teachings remain embedded in priests' and diviners' knowledge.

Question 72

Myths and sacred stories are static, that is, they never change over time.

Question 73

Primordial myths are rejected in contemporary African societies.

Question 74

Compare two of the creation myths of Native American tribes using the method of comparison described in Chapter 1 by Will Deming.

Question 75

Discuss the importance of studying indigenous religions in Africa and North America in the contemporary world.

Question 76

Estimate which of Ninian Smart's dimensions of religion (Chapter 1) would be most helpful in a description of one of the indigenous religions discussed in this chapter.

Question 77

For many native religions, the spiritual world connects with the physical world. In what way are they thought to connect?

Question 78

According to some native traditions, what extraordinary powers can humans possess?

Question 79

Explore the effect of modern society on an indigenous religion such as the Yoruba.

Question 80

Describe the Ghost Dance movement. What beliefs were associated with it?