North American Traditions
Book · North American Traditions○
God Is Red
Vine Deloria Jr.'s 1973 book arguing Native and Christian religion structure time and land in fundamentally incompatible ways.
SignificanceIt is the intellectual source most of this catalogue's own critique-entries about Native religion ultimately draw on — and the rare case, in a field dominated by outside researchers writing about Native traditions, of the critique coming from inside them.
Book · North American Traditions○
Black Elk Speaks
A 1932 book presenting itself as the unmediated spiritual testimony of a Lakota holy man, long read as an authentic Native voice.
SignificanceIts heart is Black Elk's great vision: the nation's hoop, with a flowering tree at its centre standing for the people's growth, which he was given power to make bloom. Many Native readers seek spiritual guidance in it; Vine Deloria Jr. called it a North American bible of all tribes.
The FindingA 1984 publication of the original interview transcripts showed exactly what the poet who wrote it added and cut, including that he composed the book's famous closing lament himself — the transcripts do not contain it in Black Elk's own words.
Book · North American Traditions○
Book of the Hopi
A 1963 book presented as an authentic account of Hopi religion and prophecy, and the source of nearly every 'Hopi prophecy' now circulating in New Age culture.
SignificanceThough presented as the Hopi people's own account, the book is one non-Hopi author's synthesis, written with a single named collaborator. The Hopi Tribe has repeatedly and publicly disputed both its accuracy and that collaborator's standing to release the material at all.
- Black Elk SpeaksOglala Lakota
- Book of the HopiHopi
- God Is RedStanding Rock Sioux / Native American thought
- Hopi ProphecyHopi
- John G. NeihardtLakota
- KatsinamHopi and Pueblo nations
- Peyote and the American CourtsNative American Church / United States law
- Peyote and the Native American ChurchNative American Church
- Plastic Shamans and the 1993 DeclarationComparative Religion
- Ted PerryAttributed Indigenous Texts
- Tenskwatawa and the Line of ProphetsShawnee / Delaware / Columbia Plateau
- The Chanunpa and White Buffalo Calf WomanLakota
- The Code of Indian OffensesUnited States federal policy
- The Education of Little TreeModern Esotericism / falsely claimed Cherokee
- The False Face Policy of 1995Haudenosaunee
- The Ghost DanceNorthern Paiute / Lakota and others
- The Harrington ArchiveCalifornia and Southwest nations
- The MidewiwinAnishinaabe (Ojibwe)
- The Native American ChurchNative American Church
- The Sun Dagger of Fajada ButteAncestral Puebloan (Chaco)
- Vine Deloria Jr.Native American Critique
- What Was Published Without ConsentComparative Religion