In Walking to Magdalena, Seth Schermerhorn explores a question that is central to the interface of religious studies and Native American and indigenous studies: What have Native peoples made of Christianity? By focusing on the annual pilgrimage of the Tohono O’odham to Magdalena in Sonora, Mexico, Schermerhorn examines how these indigenous people of southern Arizona have made Christianity their own. This walk serves as the entry point for larger questions about what the Tohono O’odham have made of Christianity.
With scholarly rigor and passionate empathy, Schermerhorn offers a deep understanding of Tohono O’odham Christian traditions as practiced in everyday life and in the words of the O’odham themselves. The author’s rich ethnographic description and analyses are also drawn from his experiences accompanying a group ofO’odham walkers on their pilgrimage to Saint Francis in Magdalena. For many years scholars have agreed tha
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“In the tradition of Keith Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places, Seth Schermerhorn’s Walking to Magdalena grounds the study of Native American religion, and in this case Tohono O’odham Catholicism, in a profoundly sophisticated sense of place and deliberate movement across ancestral landscapes. Theoretically informed and tangibly grounded in respectful relationships with Tohono O’odham elders, Walking to Magdalena is as humble a book as it is game-changing. We come to think differently about pilgrimage, the indigenization of Christianity, and what it might mean to become fully human.”—Michael D. McNally, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religion at Carleton College
"With methodological sophistication, sound original arguments, emic sensitivity, and even a good dose of self-aware, self-deprecating humor, Walking to Magdalena may very well become a young classic in the study of Native American Christianity."—David J. Howlett, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"[Schermerhorn] provokes in a wonderful way. . . . Walking to Magdalena succeeds as a study of walking and as a study in listening, and as such will be a welcome contribution across several fields within religious studies."—Kathleen Holscher, Journal of Religion
"Walking to Magdalena makes many original contributions to the anthropology of the Southwest, and readers interested in these theoretical discussions (from ontology to transnationalism) will profit enormously from poring over the rich and sensitive ethnography in this book. As such, this book makes a number of important contributions to anthropology—as well as to the allied disciplines of Native American studies, history, and religious studies."—Sean O’Neill, Journal of Anthropological Research
"Probably not since Ruth M. Underhill’s Singing for Power: The Song Magic of the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona . . . has anyone devoted a study to O’odham pilgrimage traditions. . . . Students of O’odham culture and history now have a worthy companion to Underhill’s seminal text."—David Martinez, Kiva: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology & History
"Twenty years ago, Michael D. McNally proposed a compelling framework for decolonizing the study of Native American religions. . . . Nowhere since has that approach found greater resonance than in Seth Schermerhorn’s Walking to Magdalena, a terrific new book that reformulates McNally’s historiographical method as ethnographic practice."—Maxine Allison Vande Vaarst, Western Historical Quarterly
"Walking to Magdalena is a fine ethnography that contributes to the emerging understanding of embodiment, emplacement, and religious co-existence or layering in contemporary cultures. Schermerhorn demonstrates a mastery of several bodies of academic literature, including anthropology and religious studies."—Jack David Eller, Reading Religion
"This is a worthwhile text that demonstrates the deep importance and meaning that O’odham and other Indigenous peoples convey as they complete their yearly walk to Magdalena."—Juan A. Avila-Hernandez, Native American and Indigenous Studies
"The subject-matter of the book is original: a decade-long partnership with the O'odham, built on trust, offers the reader insights into contemporary, every-day, lived religious experiences of this Indigenous Catholic community. . . . The conscious revelation of self, as it sits alongside the presentation of the O'odham, allows the author to acknowledge his position as the author, without effacing the co-production of this work with his partners in the O'odham community."—Kathryn N. Gray, Transmotion
"This book will be of interest to those concerned with Native American Christianities, theories of pilgrimage, and the interaction between selfhood and place. Scholars of Tohono O’odham culture will be particularly drawn to this text, which provides such a careful analysis of material culture and song work."—Suzanne Crawford O’Brien, Material Religion
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Tohono O’odham Pronunciation Guide
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Personhood and Place
2. O’odham Songscapes
3. Walkers and Their Staffs
4. Walking to Magdalena
5. Writing O’odham History
Conclusion
Appendix 1: O’odham Religious History and the Magdalena Pilgrimage
Appendix 2: O’odham Speech Genres
Notes
Bibliography
Index
