The religious life of Native Americans is a panorma featuring an immense diversity of beliefs, cermonies, and ways of life. Native Religions of North Ameria reflects this rich tradition as it admirably distills a complex subject in a practical and engaging manner. Through concise expression and careful choice of examples, Hultkrantz identifies the diversity and continuities in American Indian spirituality. He introduces the hunters and farmers, the past and presents, and the physical contexts and the sublime speculations of tribal religions, even the subtle shades of meaning within an Indian community. --

This volume contains insightful essays on significant spiritual moments in eight different Native American cultures: Absaroke/Crow, Creek/Muskogee, Lakota, Mescalero Apache Navajo, Tlingit, Yup'ik, and Yurok.

Part of a series covering the history, practices and beliefs of religions this book provides an account of the natural religions of North America, from Blackfeet and Navajo religion to Shamanism. It also gives an insight into religious drama, dance, myth and music.

Religion and Culture in Native America presents an introduction to a diverse array of Indigenous religious and cultural practices in North America, focusing on those issues in which tribal communities themselves are currently invested. These topics include climate change, water rights, the protection of sacred places, the reclaiming of Indigenous foods, health and wellness, social justice, and the safety of Indigenous women and girls. Locating such contemporary challenges within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts illuminates how Native communities' responses to such issues are not simply political, but deeply spiritual, informed by sacred traditions, ethical principles, and profound truths. In collaboration with renowned ethnographer and scholar of Native American religious traditions Inés Talamantez, Suzanne Crawford O'Brien abandons classical categories typically found in religious studies textbooks and challenges essentialist notions of Native American cultures to explore the complexities of Native North American life. Key features of this text include: Consideration of Indigenous religious traditions within their historical, political, and cultural contexts Thematic organization emphasizing the concerns and commitments of contemporary tribal communities Maps and images that help to locate tribal communities and illustrate key themes. Recommendations for further reading and research Written in an engaging narrative style, this book makes an ideal text for undergraduate courses in Native American Religions, Religion and Ecology, Indigenous Religions, and World Religions.

Representative Native American religions and rituals are introduced to readers in a way that respects the individual traditions as more than local curiosities or exotic rituals, capturing the flavor of the living, modern traditions, even as commonalities between and among traditions are explored and explained. This general introduction offers wide-ranging coverage of the major factors—geography, history, religious behavior, and religious ideology (theology)—analyzing select traditions that can be dealt with, to varying degrees, on a contemporary basis. As current interest surrounding Native American studies continues to grow, attention has often been given to the various religious beliefs, rituals, and customs of the diverse traditions across the country. But most treatments of the subject are cursory and encyclopedic and do not provide readers with the flavor of the living, modern traditions. Here, representative Native American religions and rituals are introduced to readers in a way that respects the individual traditions as more than local curiosities or exotic rituals, even as commonalities between and among traditions are explored and explained. This general introduction offers wide-ranging coverage of the major factors—geography, history, religious behavior, and religious ideology (theology)—analyzing select traditions that can be dealt with, to varying degrees, on a contemporary basis. Covering such diverse ceremonies as the Muskogee (Creek) Busk, the Northwest Coast Potlatch, the Navajo and Apache menarche rituals, and the Anishnabe (Great Lakes area) Midewiwin seasonal gatherings, Paper takes a comparative approach, based on the study of human religion in general, and the special place of Native American religions within it. His book is informed by perspective gained through nearly fifty years of formal study and several decades of personal involvement, treating readers to a glimpse of the living religious traditions of Native American communities across the country.

Manitou and God describes American Indian religions as they compare with principal features of Christian doctrine and practice. Thomas traces the development of sociopolitical and religious relations between American Indians and the European immigrants who, over the centuries, spread across the continent, captured Indian lands, and decimated Indian culture in general and religion in particular. He identifies the modern-day status of American Indians and their religions, including the progress Indians have made toward improving their political power, socioeconomic condition, and cultural/religious recovery and the difficulties they continue to face in their attempts to better their lot. Readers will gain a better sense of the give and take between these two cultures and the influence each has had on the other. In Algonquin Indian lore, Manitou is a supernatural power that permeates the world, a power that can assume the form of a deity referred to as The Great Manitou or The Great Spirit, creator of all things and giver of life. In that sense, Manitou can be considered the counterpart of the Christian God. From early times, the belief in Manitou extended from the Algonquins in Eastern Canada to other tribal nations—the Odawa, Ojibwa, Oglala, and even the Cheyenne in the Western plains. As European settlers made their way across the land, the confrontation between Christianity and Native American religions revealed itself in various ways. That confrontation continues to this day.