Religion and Culture in Native America
Ebook
Overview
Religion and Culture in Native America presents an introduction to a diverse array of Indigenous religious and cultural practices in North America, focusing on those issues in which tribal communities themselves are currently invested. These topics include climate change, water rights, the protection of sacred places, the reclaiming of Indigenous foods, health and wellness, social justice, and the safety of Indigenous women and girls. Locating such contemporary challenges within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts illuminates how Native communities’ responses to such issues are not simply political, but deeply spiritual, informed by sacred traditions, ethical principles, and profound truths.
In collaboration with renowned ethnographer and scholar of Native American religious traditions Inés Talamantez, Suzanne Crawford O’Brien abandons classical categories typically found in religious studies textbooks and challenges essentialist notions of Native American cultures to explore the complexities of Native North American life.
Key features of this text include:
- Consideration of Indigenous religious traditions within their historical, political, and cultural contexts
- Thematic organization emphasizing the concerns and commitments of contemporary tribal communities
- Maps and images that help to locate tribal communities and illustrate key themes.
- Recommendations for further reading and research
Written in an engaging narrative style, this book makes an ideal text for undergraduate courses in Native American Religions, Religion and Ecology, Indigenous Religions, and World Religions.
Chapter 1: Practical Reverence and Radical Reciprocity: Indigenous Theories of Religion
Chapter 2: Earth
Chapter 3: climate and Conservation
Chapter 4: Water
Chapter 5: Food
Chapter 6: Medicine
Chapter 7: Gender and Sexuality
Chapter 8: Church
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Religion and Culture in Native America is an indispensable addition to the literature, liberating varied Native American spiritual traditions from the tyranny of overtrodden themes found in standard religious studies texts written from a Western perspective. As a “starting place,” each chapter ends with a list of references and recommendations for further reading, a springboard for teachers and students to explore rich (and neglected) insights from Indigenous researchers, writers, culture bearers, and those who work with them. . . it is a critically urgent introduction, demonstrating that without the ongoing protection and stewardship of Indigenous spiritual traditions, we risk losing our collective connection to our Mother Earth while inching ever closer to the end of the Anthropocene.
Suzanne Crawford O’Brien provides a sensitive, indigenously-centered tour de force primer, rich with fresh vignettes of imagery and insight on the contemporary world of Native America. A book destined to be a classic, setting the bar high for subsequent scholars.
The major contribution this new volume on Native American religious traditions makes is to discuss religious life in relation to the most pressing issues impacting Native America today. It is organized thematically and, importantly, centers land, challenging scholars of religion to rethink the relationship between the material and immaterial as well as the categories of analysis we’ve been accustomed to exploring.
A critically important book in which readers are provided with powerful stories of how Indigenous peoples have sustained our cultures, communities, and sacred connection to place. In this challenging contemporary moment, Religion and Culture in Native America is a precious gift that can help all readers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, critically understand the past and draw inspiration to build a better future.
Religion and Culture in Native America serves as a nice primer for academics to utilize in their introductory course materials and for students to gain a good grounding in the vast oeuvre that is Native American Studies literature. Noteworthy and extremely useful are the maps provided by the author at the beginning of each chapter, which locate the tribal communities, nations, and groups discussed throughout the volume. I recommend this text to instructors and undergraduate students who are looking for a brief but useful introduction to more detailed course materials in Native American Studies.
With Religion and Culture in Native America, Suzanne Crawford O’Brien, in collaboration with her doctoral mentor, Inés Talamantez, has produced one of the best introductory textbooks to Indigenous religion and culture in North America (primarily the contiguous United States and Canada)... Religion and Culture in Native America represents a mature collaboration between seasoned scholars that has produced a much-needed work for those introducing North American Indigenous religions and cultures to undergraduates... I deeply appreciate that this textbook opens with story and that stories, both ancient and contemporary, animate, illustrate, and saturate each chapter. The book begins with a creation story shared among tribes along the Columbia River that emphasizes humans’ (inter‑)dependence upon the gifts and generosity of other living beings such as salmon, without whom humans are quite pitiful. I can’t recommend this textbook enough for undergraduate and
graduate settings.
Product Details
- Title : Religion and Culture in Native America
- Authors:
- Crawford O'Brien, Suzanne
- Talamantez, Inés
- Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Publication Date: 2020
- ISBN: 9781538104767
Suzanne Crawford O’Brien is professor of religion and culture at Pacific Lutheran University. She is the author of Native American Religions Traditions, Coming Full Circle: Spirituality and Wellness Among Native Communities in the Pacific Northwest, and Religion and Healing in Native America: Pathways for Renewal, as well as co-editor of American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia.
Inés Talamantez was professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara and founder of their doctoral program in Native American Religious Studies. During her years at UCSB she mentored dozens of graduate students, profoundly shaping this field of study. Her own research centered on her Mescalero Apache community, with particular emphasis on girls' coming of age ceremonies. Her publications include: “In the Space Between the Earth and the Sky,” in Native Religions and Cultures of North America: Anthropology of the Sacred; “The Presence of Isanaklesh. The Apache Female Deity and the Path of Pollen,” updated and reprinted in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives; and Teaching Religion and Healing, co-edited with Linda Barnes. She has a forthcoming book on Isanaklesh Gotal, the coming of age ceremony for Mescalero Apache girls.