Thirty years' worth of Deloria's essays on religion and Native
American life, thoughtfully edited and presented. Deloria is famous
as a pioneering Native American activist, legal scholar, and writer
(God Is Red, 1973, and Custer Died for Your Sins, 1969, among
others), but not as a theologian. Yet he spent four years in
seminary and was rooted in a multigenerational family legacy of
missionary work among Indians, so his theological opinions carry
some weight, as well as his customary bite. Historian James Treat
has gathered some of Deloria's most memorable essays and chapters
published since 1969, arranged topically and arguing for native
autonomy and the need for Indians to eschew white-dominated
Christianity and return to traditional tribal religions. Deloria's
battles with religious institutions are a recurring motif, as we
see him criticizing the Episcopal Church's missions to Indians (he
resigned from the Church's task force for minorities in 1969).
Other essays deal with legal topics like religious freedom and the
government's responsibilities for redress of native grievances.
Always, Deloria approaches religion with his attorney mindset: he
is pragmatic, solution-oriented, and impatient with illogical
arguments. His 1990s essays are generally more even-tempered than
his bluntly radical writings from the early 1970s, but some issues
still clearly push his buttons. He is particularly choleric about
the trendy appropriation of Native American spirituality by whites,
an exploitation which Deloria regards as dangerous. ("The
non-Indian appropriator conveys the message that Indians are indeed
a conquered people and that there is nothing that Indians possess .
. . that non-Indians cannot take whenever and wherever they wish,"
Deloria warned in 1992.) The essays are finished off by Deloria's
1998 afterword, in which he describes in fascinating detail how his
own intellectual development was influenced by scholars as
divergent as Rudolf Bultmann and James Cone, as well as by "the
stories of spiritual power and revelation" he learned growing up. A
forceful and clear-sighted anthology. (Kirkus Reviews)
'I think the strength of this volume lies in the sustained attention Deloria himself has given to religious matters over 30 years. His unique perspective offers our western mindsets a bit of 'shock therapy' thus opening up new horizons for us all to think differently about what really matters.' - Valerie Lesniak, Modern Believing Vol.40.4 Oct. 1999'
'one of the most stirring and articulate voies in America today'
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