Overview

"This work brings together over 25 years of the work of Vine Deloria, Jr, once dubbed ""the red man's Ralph Nader,"" now regarded as one of the most important living Native American figures in the late 1990s. For the past 30 years, Deloria has offered contributions to understanding the complexity of religion in America. In his writings he recognizes the spiritual desperation and religious breakdown in the contemporary situation, and provides the groundwork to get people to examine what they actually believe and how they must put those beliefs into practice. The essays in this collection express Deloria's concern for the religious dimensions and implications of human existence. His writings are engaged within a theoretical system of physical, not ideological, space, and ultimately give voice to this intellectual passion by calling into question our controversial religious institutions, commitments, worldviews, freedoms and experiences."

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9780415921152

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[Deloria's] insider-outsider position, and his forceful and knowledgeable advocacy of tribal religion, create a prophetic voice in the current analysis of religion in the public square. -William A. Durbin, New Theology Review For This Land, a compilation of 28 essays written during the thirty years from the 1960s to the 1990s, further displays the depth and breadth of Deloria's command of eppistemological issues. In this volume, he again brings an insightful perspective, sharp criticism, and wit to the study of the role that Christian churches... have played in oppressing Native religious beliefs... This volume is well worth careful study. It should not only spark useful discussion and debate among researchers, teachers, and students, but also rpovide guidelines for the work of activists and policymakers. Simply put, anyone concerned with the connections between religion (or spirituality) and politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century will want to read For This Land. -Stephen Greymorning, Transforming Anthropology Deloria, because of the depth of his passion, remains one of the most stirring and articulate voices in America today. - Salt Lake City Tribune, 5/99 Though controversial, Deloria's writings have challenged continually the ways that religious thinkers understand the relationship between the practices of American religion native and imported...Deloria's forceful and important essays deserve wide reading. - Publishers Weekly Thirty years' worth of Deloria's essays on religion and Native American life, thoughtfully edited and presented.. ..A forceful and clear-sighted anthology. - Kirkus Reviews, Jan 1, 1999

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)

[Deloria's] insider-outsider position, and his forceful and knowledgeable advocacy of tribal religion, create a prophetic voice in the current analysis of religion in the public square. <br>-William A. Durbin, New Theology Review <br> For This Land, a compilation of 28 essays written during the thirty years from the 1960s to the 1990s, further displays the depth and breadth of Deloria's command of eppistemological issues. In this volume, he again brings an insightful perspective, sharp criticism, and wit to the study of the role that Christian churches... have played in oppressing Native religious beliefs... This volume is well worth careful study. It should not only spark useful discussion and debate among researchers, teachers, and students, but also rpovide guidelines for the work of activists and policymakers. Simply put, anyone concerned with the connections between religion (or spirituality) and politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century will want to read For This Land. <br>-Stephen Greymorning, Transforming Anthropology <br> Deloria, because of the depth of his passion, remains one of the most stirring and articulate voices in America today. <br>- Salt Lake City Tribune, 5/99 <br> Though controversial, Deloria's writings have challenged continually the ways that religious thinkers understand the relationship between the practices of American religion native and imported...Deloria's forceful and important essays deserve wide reading. <br>- Publishers Weekly <br> Thirty years' worth of Deloria's essays on religion and Native American life, thoughtfully edited and presented.. ..A forceful and clear-sighted anthology. <br>- Kirkus Reviews, Jan 1, 1999 <br>

Author Information

Vine Deloria, Jr., a member of the Standing Rock SiouxTribe of North Dakota and former director of the NationalCongress of American Indians, is Professor of History atthe University of Colorado. He is the author of numerousbooks, including Red Earth, White Lies (1995), God isRed (1973), and Custer Died for your Sins (1969).JamesTreatteaches in the Honors College at the University ofOklahoma. He edited Native and Christian: IndigenousVoices on Religious Identity in the United States andCanada, also published by Routledge.

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