Indigeneity in African Religions

Contributes importantly to the study of African and other Indigenous religions. * Journal of Religion in Africa *
Afe Adogame’s highly readable book has given great meaning to the existence of a small group in a culturally diverse milieu. By paying crucial attention to the complexities of the Oza people’s historical, cultural and religious imaginations over the Longue Duree, the author has used an interpretive framework that discusses the present reality of the Oza people in light of their past experiences. This book will for a long time remain a contemporary benchmark for the reconstruction of the story of the Oza people. * Olutayo C. Adesina, Professor of History, University of Ibadan, Nigeria *
This book offers a rich, in-depth account of the religious culture and worldview of the Oza people in Nigeria and their connections to all spheres of life. Mapping religious change from the 19th – early 21st century, Afe Adogame demonstrates how indigenous religions are crucial for understanding not only the past, but also African futures. * Adriaan van Klinken, Professor of Religion and African Studies, University of Leeds, UK *
Afe Adogame’s important and timely book provides an insightful and rich contribution to the indigenous religious tradition of Africa. Drawing on substantial ethnographic archival materials, and analyzed through multidisciplinary approaches, Adogame renews conversations on a whole array of phenomena, including cosmology, mythology, kingship, rites of passage, ritualism and gender dynamics, in ways that reinvigorate modern scholarship in African religious traditions. The work also advances current scholarship on indigeneity and demonstrates valuable paths on how best to conduct deep research on the subject. * Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School, with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University *
Afe Adogame, a historian of religions, writes as a cultural insider and a mother-tongue speaker of the Oza language but who is fully aware of the potential pitfall of bias fraught with writing about one’s ethnic group. ... Indigeneity in African Religions is a welcome addition to the growing literature in the historiography of smaller ethnic groups in Africa and elsewhere, whose histories, worldviews, beliefs, and practices have historically not received adequate scholarly attention. ... Even the modern Oza will find that this book fills an important gap in the historiography of their people group. * Nova Religio *