India, Appalachia, and Indigeneity

Seth Ligo, Assistant Teaching Professor of Asian Religions, The Pennsylvania State University

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey

The hills of Southern Appalachia are unrivaled in diversity of salamander species. Mountains become “sky islands” separated by waterways filled by the region’s temperate rainforests. When salamanders occasionally cross to a new peak, their genetic lineage diverges, and they form a new species indigenous and specific to their new location. Like the site-specific data spun in salamandrine DNA, the data of human culture is embodied and uniquely emplaced.

My fieldwork on Hindu geography addresses sacred space, but the implications of emplaced and embodied traditions were not clear until I encountered Indigenous knowledgeways in Southern Appalachia. Cherokee ontologies made me wonder whether certain Hindu traditions, particularly traditions of Tantra, could be considered Indigenous, and if so, what that classification might reveal about Hinduism’s diversity.

I grew up on the edge of Appalachia and taught at universities in those mountains from 2020-2023. The pandemic prevented a return to India, and my curiosity and propensity for fieldwork found new purchase in my home state. I studied Cherokee language with Professor Gilliam Jackson at UNC Asheville and collaborated with Native students and professors to promote Indigenous representation in core curricula. I worked with Jackson and his TA Tessa Dahlmann, herself a Hindu, to translate the Sanskrit story of the Hindu god Ganesha into Cherokee. Our comparative conversations – just how should “yogi” be rendered in Cherokee? – were always illuminating.

Emplacement is crucial to Cherokee culture, which originated and exists in relation to specific locations. The world began in Southern Appalachia when the fresh, wet earth was brought up from below the waters. Buzzard’s wings dried the land, their rise and fall leaving those peaks and troughs that spawn new species of salamander. The first people alit on Earth at Giduwa, now in Swain County, NC. A core group of Cherokee is said to have escaped settler-colonial eradication by entering a subterranean world through Kuwohi, the highest peak in the Smoky Mountains.

Local Hindu traditions are also emplaced. The god Kodamdesar Bhairuji exists in a single location,  inherently connected to the surrounding community. His conical shape parallels that of Bir Babas and other ancestors deified after their extraordinary deaths. Local communities connect with, worship, and care for these emplaced deities. If communities relocate, they do not and cannot bring these deities with them; displaced community members return to these sites to maintain these relationships, provide care, and receive blessings.

Embodiment is crucial to the preservation of Cherokee culture. Bodies connect to place and are used to think, communicate, and educate. I experienced contemporary embodied learning in Jackson’s Cherokee-language classes where few lessons left students in their seats. Cherokee’s twinned conjugation system is mapped onto ten paired body parts, one pair for each of the ten grammatical persons. Students visualize tenses and moods are visualized organized spatially around their bodies. They stand and move through this information as they practice; they even “dance” full conjugations of verbs as part of their final exams.

Embodied learning is also fundamental in Hindu traditions. Movements of the head and hands mark tone and meter and facilitate memorization and accurate recitation of Vedic texts. Both Cherokee and Hindu contexts prioritize orality over writing, the speech of an expert superseding “dead” transcription. Learning, reciting, and hearing  oral texts requires embodied presence: teacher and student, reciter and receiver, must be in one another’s physical presence. Cherokee communities use their bodies to engage the physical landscape essential to their cultural identity; certain Hindu traditions require devotees’ bodies to be physically in the company of the deity’s body.

The word indigenous literally means “born in place,” and Hinduism originated and developed where it remains predominant. Like diverging species of salamander, Hindu traditions are heterogeneous but interconnected. Unlike the emplaced embodiment of salamanders, however, many prominent Hindu traditions are not intrinsically tied to a specific site. Other than uniqueness, what might help me identify an Indigenous stratum of local Hindu traditions?

I found an answer in Dennis Kelley’s definition of Indigeneity as distinct in its relation to place, to power and the types of power recognized, and to the protocol for interacting with places, powers, and beings. The mention of power and protocol immediately made me think of Tantra, itself an embodied protocol for accessing power. Things clicked.

An Indigenous lens does not provide comprehensive insight into Hinduism, but it does identify a particular dimension of local traditions, specifically those practitioners call Tantric. This does not mean they originate in Tantric texts so much as it indicates they are embodied, emplaced protocols for accessing power that are distinct from mainstream Hinduism. To be clear, not all Tantra is local and not all local traditions are Tantric, but local Tantric traditions can be usefully approached as Indigenous. Now it’s time for me to return to the field and check the distribution of Hindu Tantric “salamanders.”