Course Syllabus

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Instructor: TINK TINKER

Course Synopsis

This seminar will survey Native American religious traditions, both in terms of national specificity and in terms of general themes that appear in many national traditions, and learn to differentiate the worldview of Native American religious traditions from the all-encompassing euro-christian worldview that has come to dominate this continent.

READ THE  SYLLABUS,

Syllabus . REL TRAD . SPRING 216.docx

 

BOOK LIST: The following texts are required reading for this course.

  • Vine Deloria, Jr. The World We Used to Live in (Fulcrum. 2006).
  • Vine Deloria, Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Thirty year anniversary edition: Fulcrum, 2003).
  • Barbara Alice Mann, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisis (Peter Lang, 2000).
  • Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (Viking, 1977).
  • Russell Means, If You’ve Forgotten the Names of the Clouds, You’ve Lost Your Way. Treaty Publications, 2012.
  • Albert White Hat, Zuya

Overview and Objectives

         "American Indian Religious Traditions" will follow a seminar style format, with as much time given to class discussion of prepared materials as to lectures delivered by the instructor. Our attempt will be to get at a beginning understanding of a variety of American Indian cultures and their religious traditions. We will also generate the beginnings of a model for trans-cultural understandings in general. In particular, we will try to identify the larger worldview that underscores the variety of Indian cultures. At the same time, we will rigorously differentiate the worldviews of the colonizer and the colonized.

          As a result, this course does not intend to be merely classificatory or analytical in its learning style. Beyond the analytical, it will underscore the experiential aspect of learning, even (especially) with respect to the assigned texts—even as we studiously avoid New Age misappropriation of Native traditions as a different sort of the experiential.

          Moreover, it needs to be said from the outset that this is not merely a history course intended to reconstruct the "way it was" for Indian peoples in the past.  We will emphasize an understanding of the values, beliefs and religious traditions of Indian peoples in the present -- even when we are reading or discussing historical materials. An understanding of the past will thus form a foundation for understanding the present.

         This seminar will survey Native American religious traditions from a selection of different national community contexts, using primarily materials written by members of those communities – in the form of ethnographies, critical essays, and fiction.

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