Reimagining Ancestral Veneration for Contemporary Resilience Discourses in the Anthropocene

Abstract This paper explores the potential contributions that the veneration and honoring of Ancestors can make to sustainable futures and the contemporary environmental climate crisis. It does so by focusing on the concept of resilience from the perspective of the veneration of Ancestors in Akan society. It shows that reimagining Ancestral veneration in the Anthropocene offers a different approach to resilience, one that goes beyond the human/nature binary in addressing planetary challenges such as climate crisis. The entangled interconnectedness of Indigenous Akan people and their Ancestors enshrined in totems, taboos and religious belief systems offers the condition for the possibility to reimagine different futures, and worlding otherwise.