Native American Heritage Month Reading
Some Suggested Titles from AAR's Reading Religion
Reading Religion is an openly accessible book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely.
Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some books and reviews from the site and have shared some titles available to review. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email readingreligion@aarweb.org.
Reviews to Read
Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites
By Dana Lloyd
From the review:
“The work is richly insightful, and Lloyd embraces every complexity and potential contradiction in her argument. . . . Land is Kin brilliantly exposes the limits of the First Amendment and calls on future scholars, activists, and allies to think beyond its confines.” - James W. Waters
The Woman Who Married the Bear: The Spirituality of the Ancient Foremothers
By Barbara Alice Mann and Kaarina Kailo
From the review:
“Mann and Kailo draw upon cultures and histories spanning 35,000 years and academic fields like archaeomythology, cultural history, and matristic and indigenous studies. . . . I was fascinated by Mann and Kailo’s highlighting of the unifying strands within ancient matristic cultures through stories involving bears, homo sapiens, and other hominids.” – Peter Admirand
The Wisconsin Oneida and the Episcopal Church: A Chain Linking Two Traditions
Edited by L. Gordon McLester, III, Laurence M. Hauptman, Judy Cornelius-Hawk and Kenneth Hoyan House
From the review:
“The legacy of the colonial era did not define the Wisconsin Oneidas but rather fostered a relationship with the Episcopalians that endured where both groups syncretized and cooperated into a vibrant religious tradition.” – Alexis Wilson
Available for Review
The Urgency of Indigenous Values
By Philip P. Arnold
From the publisher:
“In this book, Philip Arnold utilizes a collaborative method, derived from the “Two-Row Wampum” (1613) and his 40 year relationship with the Haudenosaunee, in exploring the urgent need to understand Indigenous values, support Indigenous Peoples, and to offer a way toward humanity’s survival in the face of ecological and environmental catastrophe. Indigenous values connect human beings with the living natural world through ceremonial exchange practices with non-human beings who co-inhabit the homelands. Arnold outlines Indigenous traditions of habitation and ceremonial gift economies and contrasts those with settler-colonial values of commodification where the land and all aspects of material life belongs to human beings and are reduced to monetary use-value.
Through an examination of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, a series of fifteenth-century documents that used religious decrees to justify the subjugation and annihilation of Indigenous Peoples, Arnold shows how issues such as environmental devastation, social justice concerns, land theft, and forced conversion practices have their origins in settler-colonial relationships with the sacred—that persists today. Designed to initiate a conversation in the classroom, in the academy, and in various communities about what is essential to the category of Indigeneity, this book offers a way of understanding value systems of Indigenous peoples. By pairing the concepts of Indigeneity and religion around competing values systems, Arnold transforms our understanding of both categories.”
People of Kituwah: The Old Ways of the Eastern Cherokees
By John D. Loftin and Benjamin E. Frey
From the publisher:
“According to Cherokee tradition, the place of creation is Kituwah, located at the center of the world and home to the most sacred and oldest of all beloved, or mother, towns. Just by entering Kituwah, or indeed any village site, Cherokees reexperience the creation of the world, when the water beetle first surfaced with a piece of mud that later became the island on which they lived. People of Kituwah is a comprehensive account of the spiritual worldview and lifeways of the Eastern Cherokee people, from the creation of the world to today. Building on vast primary and secondary materials, native and non-native, this book provides a window into not only what the Cherokees perceive and understand-their notions of space and time, marriage and love, death and the afterlife, healing and traditional medicine, and rites and ceremonies-but also how their religious life evolved both before and after the calamitous coming of colonialism. Through the collaborative efforts of John D. Loftin and Benjamin E. Frey, this book offers an in-depth understanding of Cherokee culture and society.”
Indigenous Rights and the Legacies of the Bible: From Moses to Mabo
By Mark G. Brett
From the publisher:
"A Christian imagination of colonial discovery permeated the early modern world, but legal histories developed in very different ways depending on imperial jurisdictions. Indigenous Rights and the Legacies of the Bible: From Moses to Mabo explores the contradictions and ironies that emerged in the interactions between biblical warrants and colonial theories of Indigenous natural rights. The early debates in the Americas mutated in the British colonies with a range of different outcomes after the American Revolution, and tracking the history of biblical interpretation provides an illuminating pathway through these historical complexities.
A ground-breaking legal judgement in the High Court of Australia, Mabo v. Queensland (1992), demonstrates the enduring legacies of debates over the previous five centuries. The case reveals that the Australian colonies are the only jurisdiction of the English common law tradition within which no treaties were made with the First Nations. Instead, there is a peculiar development of terra nullius ideology, which can be traced back to the historic influences of the book of Genesis in Puritan thought in the seventeenth century.
Having identified both similarities and differences between various colonial arguments, and their overt dependence on early modern theological reasoning, Mark G. Brett examines the paradoxical permutations of imperial and anti-imperial motifs in the biblical texts themselves.”
Cree and Christian: Encounters and Transformations
By Clinton N. Westman
From the publisher:
“Cree and Christian develops and applies new ethnographic approaches for understanding the reception and indigenization of Christianity, particularly through an examination of Pentecostalism in northern Alberta. Clinton N. Westman draws on historical records and his own long-term ethnographic research in Cree communities to explore questions of historical change, cultural continuity, linguistic practices in ritual, and the degree to which Indigenous identity is implicated by Pentecostal commitments. Such complexity calls for constant negotiation and improvisation, key elements of Pentecostal worship and speech strategies that have been compared to jazz modes.”
Black Indians and Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916
By Christina Dickerson-Cousin
From the publisher:
“Often seen as ethnically monolithic, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in fact successfully pursued evangelism among diverse communities of indigenous peoples and Black Indians. Christina Dickerson-Cousin tells the little-known story of the AME Church’s work in Indian Territory, where African Methodists engaged with people from the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) and Black Indians with various ethnic backgrounds. These converts proved receptive to the historically black church due to its traditions of self-government and resistance to white hegemony, and its strong support of their interests. The ministers, guided by the vision of a racially and ethnically inclusive Methodist institution, believed their denomination the best option for the marginalized people. Dickerson-Cousin also argues that the religious opportunities opened up by the AME Church throughout the West provided another impetus for black migration.”
