Gerald Auger's Second Stories: Honor Thy Father

There are many different themes and approaches in the anthropology of religion. Furthermore, each approach views religion in its own unique way and has a distinctive explanation of how religion is understood by individuals. In the short film “Second Stories: Honour Thy Father” created by Gerald Auger, these anthropological approaches are evident but the ones being discussed in this piece of writing are the social-functionalist and interpretive approaches. The social-functionalist approach has two main ideas, one is social functionalism and the other is how religious views are interpreted psychologically. Additionally, the functionalist approach consists of the idea that religious rituals and beliefs serve a psychological or social function. On the contrary, the interpretative approach views religion as a system of symbols that generate certain moods that affect an individual’s behavior. Gerald Auger created this …show more content…
Moreover, analyzing this with a functionalist approach, psychologically for Auger and his families to be at rest they need to ensure his father's spirit is safely released into the spirit world. However, the refusal from the Anglican priest to perform this religious ceremony on church grounds left the family with tension for over a year. On the other hand, social functionalism focuses more on the overall social groups in a culture and activities. Additionally, social-functionalism is evident in this short film because of the rituals that Native Indians believe in and that Auger stressed as very important because that is where individuals’ social values and attitudes develop. Furthermore, Auger was determined to release his father's spirit to the spirit world therefore after a year of mourning he came back to perform the religious death ceremony. This Cree ceremony included smudging and drumming. In addition to this, a spirit death song is sung to symbolize their last