Traduire la religiosité amérindienne

• Published in: Théologiques
• Main Author: Legros, Dominique
• Format: Text
• Language: French
• Published: Faculté de théologie et de sciences des religions, Université de Montréal 2007
• Subjects: hisphilso; relig; Canada; Yukon; Tutchone
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7202/017776ar; http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/017776ar

This paper attempts to translate the religious worldview of Northern Canadian First Nation peoples through the relativization of concepts from more recent religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. These dualist religions are first contrasted with the monistic religious conceptions of the universe found in Ancient Greece and Rome. This initial analysis leads one to recognize that religion may very well proclaim the non-existence of Paradise outside this world. By further comparing the Ancient Greek and Roman monistic religions with those of the Australian Aborigines, this paper argues that a monistic conception of the world may in turn be conceived without the existence of God, gods, goddesses and even half-gods as among the Greeks or the Romans. At this juncture, the paper opens on an analysis of the religious episteme of the Tutchone Athapaskan peoples of the Yukon Territory — a religious episteme which admits the existence of no gods, no goddesses, and a fortiori no God. A discussion is then put forward on Tutchone notions of shadow-souls, breaths, yindi’ (intellect) and the relations of those realities with that of zhäak (powers and healing songs) of animals and other natural phenomena before concluding with a final relativization of religious deistic worldviews.a Cet article rend compte de l’épistémè religieux des peuples amérindiens du Nord du Canada en relativisant les concepts les plus fondamentaux de religions plus récentes, telles que le judaïsme, le bouddhisme, le christianisme et l’islam. Cette relativisation est effectuée en contrastant leur conception dualiste du monde avec celle des religions monistes grecque et romaine anciennes. Ce premier examen permet de constater qu’une religion peut parfaitement prôner la non-existence d’un paradis en dehors de l’ici-bas. En comparant ensuite les religions anciennes de la Grèce et de Rome et celles des aborigènes australiens, l’article révèle qu’une conception moniste du monde peut à son tour se concevoir sans l’existence de Dieu, ni ...