Religion and Culture in Native America

From the opening moments, it's clear that Religion and Culture in Native America is a work dedicated to disrupting and challenging the traditional scholarship on the religion and history of Native American people. The author recognizes that her work does not fit into the conventional methods of academia. Still, Suzanne Crawford O'Brien considers it fundamental to write about Native American communities’ past and present through their experience and worldviews. In tackling this ambitious task, Crawford O'Brien, who worked very closely with her mentor Inés Talamantez, an expert in Native American religion and philosophy, forms a cohesive and easy-to-follow book that explores Indigenous pasts before colonization and after, and how colonial practices affected and continue to affect their ways of life. Each of the book's chapters focuses on a pressing issue faced by Native American communities, such as climate change, water rights, environmental justice, health and education disparities, and intergenerational trauma (p. 14). The book also explores the histories of advocacy and resistance within Indigenous communities as they have fought back against a state that oppresses them and neglects their needs. This book's research is grounded in the diverse Indigenous communities of the United States and Canada.Crawford O'Brien and Talamantez are leading the field toward including modern histories of Native people and their relationship with the past. Over the last three decades, Native American studies scholars have started diving into the twentieth century. Previously there was a gap in the field, and most scholars wrote of other centuries focusing on American colonialism and the Indian Wars, for example. Since Native histories, told from an Indigenous point of view, are significantly absent in the archives, which are institutions of colonial power and information, Crawford O'Brien and Talamantez include other methodologies to build on the scholarship.In Religion and Culture in Native America, the authors include Indigenous voices, explain the importance of oral tradition and Indigenous knowledge for Native communities’ past and present, and use Native terminology and symbolisms. “Mni wakan. Water is sacred. Mni Wiconi, water is life. As Lakota, this is something we have known since we first uttered words, and it is evident in our language. Mni. Mi, I. Ni, live. Mni, I live or we live. We all need water to live,” says Candace Ducheneaux, Cheyenne River Lakota (p. 84). Moreover, the authors add evidence of rulings, protests, and marches against the state, industries, or corporations that have occupied their lands to extract resources or exploit them, like the Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Association case (p. 36) or a protest in front of Puget Sound Energy's liquefied natural gas facility in Tacoma, Washington (p. 45), that demonstrates the long history of resistance, activism, and climate change combat.Religion and Culture in Native America is a groundbreaking work that is intersectional and decolonial. Chapter 7 focuses on gender and sexuality and tackles Two Spirit people, an inclusive term to refer to gay, lesbian, transgender, and nonbinary individuals within the Indigenous community (p. 154), which itself adds to the gender history field where scholars like Joan W. Scott have discussed that gender as a category is overdetermined, and suggests that non-western cultures add alternative possibilities. Moreover, the authors clearly state in the introduction their intention to decolonize the field of religion and Native studies. In Chapter 8, titled “Christianity,” the authors argue on Native decolonial practices; for instance, the ways in which gospel itself is transformed and illuminated by Indigenous teachings and experiences (p. 190). Throughout, the authors mention many other authors working on modern histories of Native American communities that bring decolonial views to their work, such as E. Richard Atleo, the first aboriginal person in British Colombia to earn a doctoral degree, whose book is titled Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis (p. 51).Crawford O'Brien and Talamantez present an outstanding work, not only for scholars across different fields but also for the general public, with a humane and sensible aim to genuinely re-tell the histories of Indigenous peoples in North America. Crawford O'Brien and Talamantez are scholars and allies who have witnessed and aided Indigenous communities in fighting environmental justice. This book is a loyal and respectful work with the testimonies and stories trusted to them by Indigenous communities. Rodney Frey of the University of Idaho suggests this book “is destined to be a classic.” Indeed, it presents issues and topics that will and should be the center of discussion for scholars of religion, settler-colonialism, and Indigenous studies in the upcoming years.

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