4 - Transformation and Otherness

Summary

This chapter examines the aftermath of early Anglican missionisation to Makushi groups. It begins with a story that was told to the author of a past Makushi leader described by a villager in Surama as a false prophet. The chapter then discusses various prophetic movements that arose among the Makushi and neighbouring Indigenous groups during the 1840s and afterwards which culminated in the alleluia religion. These movements used material and immaterial objects acquired and appropriated from the missionaries for new purposes. Many of these movements emphasised a central theme of transformation, which was often described in colonial sources in terms of Indigenous people becoming ‘white’ in one form or another. The movements combined resistance to colonialism with Christianity, shamanism, and sometimes also sorcery. In this context, shamanism became a means for contacting the Christian God. The chapter foregrounds a shamanic relational mode that structures interactions with outsiders among the Makushi.