Wakinyan is an excellent overview of Lakota religious thought and practice, introducing readers to its essential components. Through finely detailed descriptions of rituals and various types of religious figures, Stephen E. Feraca explains the significance of such practices as the Sun Dance, sweat lodge ritual, vision quest, Yuwipi ritual, and peyote use. He also discusses the significance of herbs and religious artifacts and objects and explains the roles and responsibilities of medicine men and other religious practitioners. First written as a report for the Department of the Interior in 1963, Wakinyan has long been recognized as a classic study of Lakota religion. This edition retains most of the original text, with its first-rate ethnographic descriptions of religious practices. The author's new endnotes bring the reader up to date on changes in Lakota religion during the last three decades. Stephen E. Feraca worked for the Department of the Interior for a quarter of a century before retiring in 1985. He is the author of Why Don't They Give Them Guns? The Great American Indian Myth.

"You shall have no other gods besides Me." This injunction, handed down through Moses three thousand years ago, marks one of the most decisive shifts in Western culture: away from polytheism toward monotheism. Despite the momentous implications of such a turn, the role of idolatry in giving it direction and impetus is little understood. This book examines the meaning and nature of idolatry--and, in doing so, reveals much about the monotheistic tradition that defines itself against this sin.

The authors consider Christianity and Islam, but focus primarily on Judaism. They explore competing claims about the concept of idolatry that emerges in the Hebrew Bible, as a "whoring after false gods." Does such a description, grounded in an analogy of sexual relations, presuppose the actual existence of other gods with whom someone might sin? Or are false gods the product of "men's hands," simply a matter of misguided belief? The authors show how this debate, over idolatry as practice or error, has taken shape and has in turn shaped the course of Western thought--from the differentiation between Jewish and Christian conceptions of God to the distinctions between true and false belief that inform the tradition of religious enlightenment.

Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G. E. Moore, this brilliant account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities. Its insights into pluralism and intolerance, into the logic and illogic of the arguments religions aim at each other, make "Idolatry" especially timely and valuable inthese days of dark and implacable religious difference.

"Two very important books have appeared in 1996: 'Reuben Snake: Your Humble Serpent' and 'One Nation Under God: The Triumph of the Native America Church.' I say they're important because they are designed for the U.S. Government and the American people as an audience. The books are not teaching Indigenous people about peyote; they're documents to voice the concerns of indigenous Nations, to protect those of us who participate in the spirituality of peyote -- as members of the Native American Church or as individuals". (The Native American Press, Ojibwe News)

"One Nation Under God is an essential and informative contribution to Native American studies reading lists". (The Midwest Book Review)

"Reuben Snake's personal testimony on behalf of the sacred peyote is seconded and supported by the chapter 'Voices of the Native American Church, ' which presents a persuasive collection of short, heartfelt testimonials... about the life-affirming teachings of love and respect that are at the heart of the peyote way". (Shaman's Drum)

This book celebrates the endurance of the Native American Church, which now has some 80 chapters throughout the country. Prayer meetings, the sacramental use of peyote, and the significance of various practices and objects are described. Eloquent testimony of Church members from different tribes demonstrates that peyote is not used to obtain "visions" but to heal the body and spirit and to teach righteousness. The authors describe the legal battle to overturn the Supreme Court's Smith decision of 1990, which cited peyote use to deny the Native American Church the First Amendment right to "the free exercise of religion". The American Indian Religious Freedom ActAmendments, passed by Congress in 1994, providing an exemption allowing the use of peyote by the Native American Church, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1997.

Rivers in India are commonly associated with certain worldly religious values: wealth, beauty, long life, good health, food, love, and the birth of children. However, these "domestic" values have been relatively neglected by Indologists, who have tended to view India and Hinduism through the prism of poverty, misery, asceticism, and themes of purity or pollution. Following recent scholarship by arguing that the earthly pursuits are equally vital to an understanding of popular Hinduism, Feldhaus examines the role of these ideals in the religious meanings of rivers in Maharashtra, a large region of western India. Drawing both on written religious texts and on a wide range of oral, iconographic, and ritual materials gathered in the course of field work in India, she shows that these values, which are usually associated with women or represented by goddesses, are an important motif in popular religious practices and oral traditions associated with the rivers of Maharashtra, and she presents the many different ways in which rivers are imagined, enshrined, worshipped, and feared.

Annemarie Anrod Shimony's classic work clearly shows the contemporary cultural and religious crises that face the Longhouse Iroquois at the Six Nations Reserve, Ontario. Shimony presents a lucid and eloquent account of the survival of the Native American tradition, which is struggling to maintain political and cultural autonomy in an ever-changing modern world. Based on original field work dating from 1953 to 1961, and supplemented by new material describing changes during the last thirty years, Shimony's work is once again the most comprehensive ethnography of the largest extant traditional Iroquoian community. Some of the material discussed includes the social organization, the system of hereditary chiefs, the beliefs and practices of the Longhouse religion, the events of the Iroquoian life cycle, and the extensive medicinal and witchcraft aspects of the culture. Additional areas of focus include the rituals of the agricultural calendar and Iroquois conceptions of death and burial rituals. As Elizabeth Tooker wrote in Indians of the Northeast, Shimony's monograph is, "next to Morgan's League, the most important general description of the Iroquois". With its new material added, Conservatism among the Iroquois is once again required reading for anyone interested in Native American culture.

This ground-breaking study reveals an unorganized and previously unacknowledged religion at the heart of American culture. Nature, Albanese argues, has provided a compelling religious center throughout American history.

Crow Christianity speaks in many voices, and in the pages of Crow Jesus, these voices tell a complex story of Christian faith and Native tradition combining and reshaping each other to create a new and richly varied religious identity. In this collection of narratives, fifteen members of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation in southeastern Montana and three non-Native missionaries to the reservation describe how Christianity has shaped their lives, their families, and their community through the years. Among the speakers are elders and young people, women and men, pastors and laypeople, devout traditionalists and skeptics of the indigenous cultural way. Taken together, the narratives reveal the startling variety and sharp contradictions that exist in Native Christian devotion among Crows today, from Pentecostal Peyotists to Sun-Dancing Catholics to tongues-speaking Baptists in the sweat lodge. Editor Mark Clatterbuck also offers a historical overview of Christianity's arrival, growth, and ongoing influence in Crow Country, with special attention to Christianity's relationship to traditional ceremonies and indigenous ways of seeing the world. In Crow Jesus, Clatterbuck explores contemporary Native Christianity by listening as indigenous voices narrate their own stories on their own terms. His collection tells the larger story of a tribe that has adopted Christian beliefs and practices in such a way that simple, unqualified designations of religious belonging - whether ""Christian"" or ""Sun Dancer"" or ""Peyotist"" - are seldom, if ever, adequate.

This landmark volume compiled by Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland O. Abiodun brings readers into the diverse world of Ifa-its discourse, ways of thinking, and artistic expression as manifested throughout the Afro-Atlantic. Firmly rooting Ifa within African religious traditions, the essays consider Ifa and Ifa divination from the perspectives of philosophy, performance studies, and cultural studies. They also examine the sacred context, verbal art, and the interpretation of Ifa texts and philosophy. With essays from the most respected scholars in the field, the book makes a substantial contribution toward understanding Ifa and its role in contemporary Yoruba and diaspora cultures.

From first-hand experience, the author tells of daily life among the Hopi Indians in Northern Arizona--their beliefs, rituals and Catcina (Kachina) ceremonies. The interaction and conflict between the Anglo and Indian cultures are presented from the viewpoint of the Hopi family. Robert Boissiere, born in Paris, France, came to the United States after World War II. A member of the French army, he was imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp from which he managed to escape and join a group of Basques in the Pyrenees. After moving to California, Boissiere found himself on an artistic and spiritual pilgrimage to the Hopi villages. There he was adopted by a Hopi family and became a participant in their cultural life. "The Hopi Way" is based on his experiences living as a Hopi. He is also the author of "Po Pai Mo," also from Sunstone Press.

Frances Henry's book explores various African religions as part of a cultural system, relevant to national identity in the island of Trinidad The book deals with the dynamic doctrinal and ideological changes that have taken place within the religions, and documents both the legislative and social acceptance of African religion today. This study is an important documentation of contemporary history and religious debate. It analyzes the process by which marginalized religions move toward the mainstream and the various internal and external tensions such movements engender. It makes a particularly strong contribution in its discussions of ritual authenticity. The work is based on a three-year period of fieldwork in Trinidad. Of interest to students and scholars interested in Caribbean Studies, especially African-oriented studies.

Those who teach courses in Native American religious traditions know the difficulty of finding quality books that deal in concise yet reliable fashion with a number of tribal traditions and are suitable for use in the classroom. In this volume, Lawrence Sullivan seeks to help fill this lacuna.

For centuries, a persistent and important component of Lakota religious life has been the Inipi, the ritual of the sweat lodge. The sweat lodge has changed little in appearance since its first recorded description in the late seventeenth century. The ritual itself consists of songs, prayers, and other actions conducted in a tightly enclosed, dark, and extremely hot environment. Participants who “sweat� together experience moral strengthening, physical healing, and the renewal of social and cultural bonds. Today, the sweat lodge ritual continues to be a vital part of Lakota religion. It has also been open to use, often controversial, by non-Indians. The ritual has recently become popular among Lakotas recovering from alcohol and drug addiction. This study is the first in-depth look at the history and significance of the Lakota sweat lodge. Bringing together data culled from historical sources and fieldwork on Pine Ridge Reservation, Raymond A. Bucko provides a detailed discussion of continuity and changes in the “sweat� ritual over time. He offers convincing explanations for the longevity of the ceremony and its continuing popularity.

A Study of the Disputation between Bartlome de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda on the religious and iltellectual capacity of the American Indians.

This enthnographic study describes and analyzes the ritual cycle celebrated by Zulu kinship groups at birth, maturity, marriage, sickness and death as understood and interpreted by the Zulus themselves. The Zulu world view emerges as a logical and coherent system of thought, expressed primariliy through rites, rituals and symbols Axel-Ivar Berglund spent his childhood in Zululand as the son of Swedish missionaries serving there.