Seth Schermerhorn - Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place

Full title: Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O'odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories

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 transnational 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.

Seth Schermerhorn is the author of Walking to Magdalena: Personhood and Place in Tohono O'odham Songs, Sticks, and Stories, which was co-published by the University of Nebraska Press and the American Philosophical Society. He is also the co-editor of Movement and Indigenous Religions, which was published by Routledge. He is the founding editor of the journal Indigenous Religious Traditions.

The lecture took place at the University of Tartu on 14 October 2024.