The focus of this thesis is the Heraka movement and its impact on the Zeme, a ‘Naga tribe’, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. The Heraka is a religious reform movement derived from the traditional practice known as Paupaise. It was organised from disparate groups of the early 1930s into a centralised and effective movement in 1974. This thesis examines the formation of the movement through to its present state. A pivotal concern is the evolution of Heraka identity, and its emergence into the arena of competing and often contested ideologies of ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity’ in North East India. The processes by which the movement has evolved, exhibiting the contextualisation of an indigenous identity, grounded in custom and tradition, are also outlined. These factors, along with significant and complex relationships with Paupaise, ‘neo-Hindu’ organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Zeme Christians, and the larger ‘Naga’ Christian groups, have shaped pronounced yet fluctuating Heraka identities. This demonstrates the difficult transition the Heraka movement faces as it shifts from the local to the regional and even the national. The time period studied spans the anti-British Heraka period of the late 1930s, extensive Zeme village reorganisation and the renaissance of the reform during the 1950s, through to the present. A variety of sources is brought to bear on this investigation: imperial archives, the official Heraka Hingde Book, Heraka use of written documents, and fieldwork materials, including oral histories and case studies. The thesis begins by examining the symbol of the Bhuban cave, an important pilgrimage site for Hindus of various kinds, as well as the Heraka. The way the Heraka have come to negotiate their identity is considered. This occurs on two levels: on the one hand, they claim to be a ‘traditional’ group in their quest for ‘authenticity’ and ‘indigeneity’; on the other, they assert their ‘modernity’ and are hence reformist. This developing identity clearly derives from the agrarian reforms of the 1930s onwards, an initial response to what was a millenarian tendency, which in turn influenced these changes. Hence, a different cosmology developed, incorporating monotheistic principles, in order to accommodate the now changing village structure, and the increasing mobility and flexibility of the people. Contact with the outside world also brought about a nuanced and subtle reading of ‘tradition’ vis-à-vis other groups considered ‘traditional’, while similarly adapting to the pressures of other dominant religious traditions by distinguishing themselves as inherently ‘religious’. The introduction of ‘divine rules’, exemplified in the Hingde Book, and the establishment of a Kelumki (prayer house), as ‘sacred’ space, mandated and reflected the formation of this ‘religious community’. This construction of community entails a consideration of notions of boundaries in different contexts: Paupaise, Christian and ‘Hindu’. Boundary-making attitudes and behaviour largely determine group membership, legitimated by ‘primordial’ ethnic notions within the Zeme community itself. Since such notions are largely confined to the realm of perception, these boundaries are fluid; they fluctuate according to context. The leaders’ efforts to manage Heraka reforms give rise to visible tensions between rural and urban communities. Hangrum village has become the symbol for the rural community of a millenarian age, ritualised with its ‘king’s court’, while the urban community disputes such claims as ‘superstition’. The juxtaposition of these two views amplifies the struggle within the Heraka community, as they strive to maintain a balance between the past legitimising ‘tradition’, and the present and future legitimising ‘reform’. The attempt to construct a viable Heraka identity against other group identities has given rise to oscillating differences in the way the Heraka locate and re-locate themselves, both within and outside their community. These positional referents are vital for understanding the evolving nature of Heraka identity in relation to their reform.

This thesis focuses primarily on Lakota concerns about the appropriation of their spirituality. The religious authority of the Lakota has been recognised by Native Americans and non- Natives alike through the books of Nicholas Black Elk, who witnessed the establishment of reservations in the Plains, the aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre and the conversion of his people to Christianity, and through the teachings of his nephew Frank Fools Crow who kept the prohibited Lakota Sun Dance alive and other ceremonial practices until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed by Congress in 1978. Not long after, elders from Lakota and other Plains Indian Nations became increasingly concerned about what they perceived to be the misuse of their ceremonies. In 1993, five hundred representatives of the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota peoples endorsed the ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’, which primarily attacks the commodification of Lakota ceremonies by ‘pseudo-Indian charlatans’ and ‘new age wannabes’. Ten years later, a group of Lakota and neighbouring Plains Indian spiritual leaders supported the ‘Arvol Looking Horse Proclamation’ prohibiting all non-Native participation in Plains Indian ceremonies. Meanwhile, in academic institutions, several Native American scholars accused their non-Native colleagues of exploiting Native American communities, raising methodological questions connected to insider/outsider debates and research ethics in the study of Native American religious traditions. The thesis first examines the historical roots of the religious ‘war’ between Native Americans and non-Natives and analyses how the expropriation of Lakota ceremonies across tribal boundaries became the basis of a pan-Indian religion. By bringing together diverse indigenous peoples of North America as the ‘colonised’ against non-Native appropriators perceived as the ‘colonisers’, a tension developed between racial interpretations of ‘Native American’ based on blood quantum methods, established by the federal governments, and ‘traditional’ definitions where attitude and behaviour determines membership of the group. The main body of the thesis explores this tension in a variety of contexts: among the Lakota themselves, non-Native Americans accused of appropriating Lakota ceremonies, contemporary Mi’kmaq in eastern Canada who have employed Lakota and other Plains Indian ceremonial practices, and in the academy where ethnicity and ethics in the study of Native American religions are currently debated. The matter is further complicated by evidence illustrating that the Lakota have no centralised authority where traditional religious matters are concerned; however, Native Americans consistently refer to ‘protocols’ that define the way ceremonies are performed and the rules of participation, largely based on the Lakota model again, in particular where pan-Indian religion is present, such as at Mi’kmaq powwows, and in ceremonies where the pipe is smoked, such as the sweat lodge ceremony and vision quest, which have been appropriated extensively, often without the protocols, by non-Native Americans, including practitioners in Britain where some have altered the ceremonies to create a reconstituted British indigenous tradition. The attempt to restrict participation in Native American ceremonies according to ethnicity has not only created conflict between Native and non-Native peoples, but within Native communities as well. Nevertheless, the call for exclusivity has come after previous warnings about the misuse of ceremonies had been ignored. Therefore, the thesis examines Native American discourses about the breaking of ‘protocols’ as being at the heart of objections to the appropriation of Native American spirituality.