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Philip Scher 13 Unveiling the Orisha Peoples of African descent in the New World do make of Africa and Slavery a profound presence in their cultural worlds, and seek rather to describe the tradition of discourse in which they participate, the local network of power and knowledge in which they are employed, and the kinds of identities they serve to fashion. - David Scott he legacy of African American anthropology in the United States until recently was marked in large part by a search for cultural survivals. From the scouring of the material and cultural worlds of African Americans for "Africanisms" (Holloway 1990), to the more abstract and perhaps more sensitive search for "grammars" of African origin still operating in African American patterns of behavior and aesthetics (Mintz and Price 1976), the task has been essentially the same: to authenticate an African past for New World descendants of Africans.' It has been pointed out that investigations into African American culture that stress authentication at some level ignore the very real and active uses to which the past is put by African Americans themselves.' In this chapter I will try to demonstrate, by examining Ogun and the larger Orisha tradition in which he is placed, how the past is constantly being negotiated by different groups active in the Orisha religion in Trinidad and Tobago. My object here is to outline the specifics of two historical narratives and to show them as parts of a longstanding debate, the outcome of which is now, at some level, the control of the future of the religion and its place both in the national consciousness and in the rapidly growing transnational network of Orisha practitioners. The historical narratives which are utilized by various 316 Philip Scher groups of practitioners of the Orisha faith in Trinidad have embedded in them elements which are instrumental in the presentation of each group's ethos, as well as in the struggle to find a voice for the general public via the national media. The emergence of the Orisha faith into the public eye, although a relatively new development, is in keeping with and utilizes strategies that recall the adaptive nature of Yoruba religion in general. However, instead of focusing only on the consistent qualities of Yoruba religion and its perennial ability to negotiate political terrain, as a mark of its "Africanness,":' I am here more interested in the contemporary "self-fashioning" that the construction of historical narratives implies, and the role that pure Africanness versus a New World character plays in that project. Toward that end I will be looking here at the contemporary condition of Orisha worship in Trinidad, with special attention to the Orisha practitioner's relationship to the general public. New developments in the religion and among individual practitioners over the past several years speak to a new commitment to bringing the faith into the public eye. This commitment has taken forms as grand as a campaign for an official public holiday for Orisha (Lord Shango Day) down to a local artist's series of t-shirts featuring, among other Orishas, a many-armed Ogun, with each hand holding an emblematic instrument of Ogun's in a sort of iconographic melding of Orisha and Hindu images. Historical Narrative and Representation The different versions of the history of the Orisha religion in Trinidad, in addition to being at the center of a particular local debate, are also reflected in the history of the scholarship of African religion in the New World. The main point of contention in these many narratives is how the Roman Catholic presence in New World African religion emerges. Before examining this question in greater detail, I would like to stress that the Catholic element as a specific problem in the narrative-that is, as something requiring explanation-is determined in this case wholly by the role that it plays in the possible future of the Orisha religion itself. In other words, the current struggle for legitimacy in Trinidad, which is currently focused, in part, on whether or not Catholic saints and liturgy belong in the Orisha religion, has made the historicization of the Catholic elements, the hows and whys of their existence within the religion, of paramount importance. In this way, a contemporary development in the Orisha religion which manifests itself as a struggle to represent itself to a global and national audience has highlighted the importance of a particular aspect of its own history. It is in the process of identity formation, and...

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