Abstract
Both the strength and weakness of Gregory Sushan’s Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions is its encyclopedic breadth. In this book, Sushan clearly describes the experience of near-death experiences (NDEs) in indigenous faiths in North America, Africa, and Oceania. In doing so, Sushan acknowledges that NDEs are well recognized throughout the world even if the interpretations vary. The first and last sections of the book have special value as they both lay out the subject matter and offer conclusions and implications.
Sushan notes that in many indigenous cultures, NDEs have to be distinguished from shamanistic visions incurred within a trance. He also notes the influence of culture on NDEs. For example, sometimes people will interpret an NDE only when they have been exposed to the idea. Sushan also notes that in certain African cultures where both death and dying are greatly feared, with little emphasis placed on the afterlife, NDEs are rare. In addition, Sushan reminds readers that while these reports have much in common with recent Western reports such as seeing deceased relatives, the entry to the afterlife is highly influenced by cultural images of such an afterlife.
The middle three sections of the book describe such accounts among a variety of the indigenous peoples found in North America, Oceania, and in Africa. Here is where readers will find individual reports of NDEs as experienced within varied cultural systems and tribes. In these sections, one has the experience of reading what seems like a series of individual entries in an encyclopedia. While each of the sections has a conclusion, I wished for more thematic integration of these sections.
Nonetheless, readers interested in exploring near-death phenomena across indigenous religious cultures will find much to admire in the work—except, of course, the near $100 cost. This may be, except for those most devoted in their interest, a critical library resource rather than a purchase for personal libraries.