Sheryl Lightfoot is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia and author of
Elsa Stamatopoulou is Director of the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and author of
Reconciling Witchcraft and Hṛ Cosmopolitanism: Boundary Restorative Violence and the Spatial Temporality of Ancestral Transboundary Practices
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Published:November 2023
Tone Bleie, 2023. "Reconciling Witchcraft and Hṛ Cosmopolitanism: Boundary Restorative Violence and the Spatial Temporality of Ancestral Transboundary Practices", Indigenous Peoples and Borders, Sheryl Lightfoot, Elsa Stamatopoulou
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In examining the deep (pre)history of transnational Santals, this chapter engages ethnoarchaeology, ethnolinguistics, cognitive science, and genetics to apply the Santals' long-sustained theory of transmigratory cosmopolitanism to contemporary studies of Indigenous cosmopolitanisms. The Santals utilize mindscapes, witchcraft, memory, social archaeology of institutions, and Indigenous cosmopolitanism to inform Santal understandings of borderlands across temporal and spatial chasms. By drawing on these transhistorical and transgeographical practices, this chapter pursues an understanding of the borderlands of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh informed not by their relationship to states but by their relationship to transnational Indigenous cosmopolitanism. Thus, this chapter poses a comprehensive understanding of territory and physical boundaries, emphasizing the epistemological value of Indigenous configurations of fluid histories and spaces.
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