Introduction

This article reflects my pedagogical experiences as a doctoral scholar in anthropology, teaching a 2nd-year undergraduate class in “Religion and Society” at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. In this reflection, I draw attention to how the ecology of the spirit[1]—one that intersects the material objects found in the natural environment and the spiritual beliefs which animate peoples’ religious worldview—brings together Yoruba river goddess (Osun) and the human domain in an embodied ritual performance. This article examines the integration of my recent research on the embodied performance of Osun worshippers in Osogbo, Southwest, Nigeria into the classroom through observational video-films. By exploring the mediating power of the camera and the images it produces to elicit classroom reactions from students, this article raises a key question that I and my students grappled with: how does human spirituality impact the environment—and vice versa? It elicits a second question: if the camera can capture visible material objects such as trees, water, and rocks at the site of Osun goddess worship in Osogbo, how is it capable of picturing the things that are invisible in these material objects of worship, at the same place of spiritual reverence by the Osun riverbank?

While I suggest that the unscripted contents of observational video-films—such as the ones I projected in the classroom on the embodied ritual performance of Osun worshippers—can be deployed both as observational and pedagogical tools, their specificity in the study of a religious phenomenon such as the invisible water spirit of Osun hinges on revealing things through performance rather than explaining things through authorial textual imposition. The video-films are capable of removing a sense of distance from the observers, my students in this case, and allow access to similar experiences as those the anthropologist was immersed in during fieldwork.

The Context

As the class in “Religion and Society” was drawing to a close during the summer of 2023, I taught a topic on “Gods and the Spirits” to a class of fifty-three undergraduate students. I had prepared a PowerPoint slide embedded with still photographs alongside two unedited video clips that I shot at different locations during my doctoral fieldwork. These still images and the video-film are related to Yoruba oracular religion, specifically the Osun River goddess. They are specifically visual records of street processions of worshippers of the Osun deity to the Osun riverbank in Osogbo town in southwest Nigeria and the supplications the worshippers made at the preserved rainforest of the Osun.

In teaching socio-cultural anthropology, especially on subjects relating to religion and society, a key learning outcome is that students understand the deep entanglement of religion, spirituality, and human-environment relations. By showing them the materials from my own fieldwork that explore the landscapes and rituals associated with Yoruba Osun River worship, students not only become more literate in the precise details of this culture, but they also begin to reflect on the fundamental religiosity of all theories and cultures of human-environment encounter. When conversations turn to climate change or environmental destruction for the sake of exercising a religious belief, I ask them to consider the ways in which religion – specifically Euro-American Christianity or indigenous religious encounter – might inform conventional and vernacular environmental politics in the Canadian context, or the ways in which they observe rituals of waterfront encounter in their own cultures.

Methodology

The short video-films that I shared with my students over three lecture periods show the flow of the Osun River and the worshippers of the Osun goddess. Because they are fragmented pieces that are yet to be edited into a whole cinematic form, I often pause or in some cases, replay scenes to explain to students the meaning of objects and materials that are found in these video-films. Over these three lecture periods, I often start the class with about ten minutes of video-film show-time and ask students to reflect on the images, sounds, the gestures, as well as the ambience of the environment in which the religious performances were taking place. The significance of employing this method is not just to engage the students, sustain their interests, and draw their attention to the details of the video-film as well as the still images that follow, it is also to engage them in critical analysis of observational video-films contents.

At a point of ‘showing and pausing’ one of the unedited video-films, one student asked me a question that points to the limitation of this particular media. Paraphrasing the question, the student asked if these video-films serve as evidence of what we could see and collect from the field, how might we picture or represent the water spirit of the Osun River since it is rendered as invisible in these documents? The student was referring to a video clip in which the Osun River worshippers had offered live goats, pigeons, and cooked food to the river as it flows away, believing that the goddess spirit accepts these materials as they throw them into the river. The question the student asked reifies the idea that, if the camera—one tool that is key to how contemporary anthropologists record events and observe the people they study—can capture what is physically visible in the environment, how then is it capable of picturing what is invisible such as the water spirit of Osun, and more generally, the cosmologies and religious beliefs that shape human perceptions of ecological forms?

Ecology of the Spirit: Understanding and Applying the Theory

The question that the student raised—out of numerous other questions that emerged during the class—reveals that students are able to develop not only an exceptional ability for critical thinking through these video-films, but can also learn abstract religious and environmental concepts such as ‘water spirit.’ While my role as a tutor is to ensure that interactive dialogue is enacted in the classroom through the materials that I present, the analytical engagement of the students with these images allows me to identify troubling issues that may come with grasping abstract religious concepts.

Beyond instigating the ‘reality’ of ecological imagination, the video-films and still images I showed highlight my students’ abilities to grasp and engage with contemporary issues relating to climate change and human impacts on the environment. The video-films elucidate the commonality of issues such as pollution and erosion and show how they connect the environment to religious practices, irrespective of spatial locations, geographical, and cultural differences. Such an engagement is not just to enhance students’ understanding of the course contents. It also prepares them for anthropological fieldwork that relates to the connections between environmental conditions such as climate change, and the cultures – including religious cultures – in which these changes take place. These images exemplify how religious experiences impact the environment as embedded in diverse cultures across the world. In my teaching, the video-films and the still images provide the students with insights to unveil the problematic character of religious practices and potential human interaction with environmental biodiversity—such as throwing live animals, as well as both organic and inorganic objects into the Osun River—ones in which the sacred is often regarded as integral part of the daily life of Yoruba oracular religious practitioners.

Abstract concepts such as ecology and spirit—a conceptual combination (ecology of the spirit) that connects the complex relationship between the environment and spirituality through religious activities—are treated as interdependent. The interdependence of these concepts is vividly explained in moving images that are embedded with sounds and indexical gestures that enhance students’ ability to connect and apply them to real-world situations during fieldwork. One student told me after returning from a mini-fieldwork observation embedded in the course, “those video clips and the still images you showed in the classroom helped me to reflect on the Rideau River in Ottawa, I had wondered about how the river is used for skiing when it is frozen at the peak of winter.” Although the student’s feedback and the report she brought from the field connect the Rideau River in Ottawa to a sporting activity at a particular period, it is an indication that the pedagogical approach of teaching topics in religion through observational video-films provides students with a better understanding of social and cultural aspects of an environmental phenomenon such as a river. It also provided me the opportunity to simply suggest to my students that, in some respects, North American recreational culture has potent religious and theological dimensions of its own.

The knowledge of distant places such as Osun River in southwest Nigeria in the moving images thus allowed the students to have a deeper understanding of the multimodal pathways that anthropologists use in collecting and analyzing field data. This is especially important in a ‘wet environment’ where field notes may sometimes be impossible to write. One student even remarked: “I am fascinated by the images and the video clips you showed in the class. They have helped me to make sense of what Yoruba religion is all about and, I feel I could make a proposal to study Yoruba religion for my graduate degree. I am interested in pursuing research for my graduate dissertation on Africa.” This feedback demonstrates how bringing the audiovisual documentation of my own fieldwork helped students to comprehend issues relating more concretely to religion and environment while planting seeds for future study as well.

Conclusion

In the well-established discipline of socio-cultural anthropology, and specifically in the study of religion, audiovisual documents are useful as both a field research method and a pedagogical tool. As an observational film producer who transitioned into academia following many years of working as a photojournalist, my own photographic-cum-video work allowed me to vividly explain to my students the Yoruba indigenous religious experience and its connection to ecology of the spirit. The “camera frame,” like the photographic prints and the moving pictures it produces, is of course, inherently subjective, reflecting what Christian Metz (1985:81) has called the “silent rectangle”[2]. Yet, the reproduction of the world in observational video-films is one key way I have provided empirical evidence of important socio-ecological and religious phenomena to my students. This pedagogical technique has consistently elicited the desired questions from the students and advanced the learning objectives of my courses, especially in the area of religion and its ecological impacts on the environment.

Akintunde Akinleye is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa where he also received an M.A in Film Studies. Before Carleton, he worked as a photojournalist in Nigeria for nearly two decades traveling West and Central Africa for Reuters’ news agency. Akintunde’s Ph.D. research focuses on how films and other visual materiality communicate black representation in popular culture, examining their impacts on African oracular religions and Yoruba culture.

1. David Kingsley, for example, has used the term ecological spirituality to denote ethical, moral or religious tendencies that relate to ecological issues with the recognition that the environment in which religious practices are held is affirmed to be alive and full of spirits. Kingsley, David. Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1995), 3. ↑

2. Christian Metz used the term “silent rectangle" to describe the characteristic nature of the photographic still image in comparison to the moving image, one in which the act of looking is not only determined by the author of the photograph but also by the spectator. Metz, Christian. “Photography and Fetish,” Autumn (1985): 81-90, https://doi.org/10.2307/778490. ↑