Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This paper will breach an amalgam of subjects within the Eastern Shoshone culture that focuses on the interplay between religious experiences, dreams, altered states, visual culture, and environments. This study considers the Eastern Shoshone world view as a navigatory structure comprised of how actors perceive their environment–and how such perceptions and beliefs buttress themselves upon visual processes perfected through interactions within physical environments, entangling cosmological and phenomenological belief structures with material environments. Through such processes, a carbon footprint regarding experience, values, and belief becomes documented as visual culture, guiding and revivifying the Eastern Shoshone worldview and actions. I wish to explore these cultural specifics by putting forth a conversation that revolves around religion and neuroscience, while also providing a glimpse into the Eastern Shoshone’s vision quest ritual. I trust that doing so will illuminate why the Eastern Shoshone worldview tethers itself to lived experience derived through vision, observation, ritual action, and phenomenological dynamics.