Spirit Wars: Native North American Religions in the Age of Nation Building / Edition 1

by Ronald Niezen, Kim Burgess, Manley Begay, Phyllis Fast, Valerie Long Lambert

Overview

Spirit Wars is an exploration of the ways in which the destruction of spiritual practices and beliefs of native peoples in North America has led to conditions of collective suffering—a process sometimes referred to as cultural genocide. Ronald Niezen approaches this topic through wide-ranging case studies involving different colonial powers and state governments: the seventeenth-century Spanish occupation of the Southwest, the colonization of the Northeast by the French and British, nineteenth-century westward expansion and nationalism in the swelling United States and Canada, and twentieth-century struggles for native people's spiritual integrity and freedom. Each chapter deals with a specific dimension of the relationship between native peoples and non-native institutions, and together these topics yield a new understanding of the forces directed against the underpinnings of native cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520219878
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/28/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1570L (what's this?)

About the Author

Ronald Niezen is Research Scholar in the History Department, University of Winnipeg, and is currently engaged in field research with the Pimicikamak Cree Nation. He has worked with a number of native communities in northern Canada and has served as a delegate to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

Table of Contents

List of Figures 
Preface 

I. Introduction 

2. The Conquest of Souls 
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 
Epidemics and the "Black Robes" of New France 
Puritans and "Praying Indians" in New England 
Prelude to Nation Building 
The Pequots' Conversion to Christianity,
by Kim Burgess 

3. Learning to Forget 
Enlightenment and Evolutionism 
The Origins of the Indian Residential School 
Residential Education in Canada 
The Hidden Catastrophe 
The Way of the Dine Still Sustains Us,
by Manley Begay Jr. 

4· Medical Evangelism 
Contrasting Styles of Healing 
Mission Programs, Federal Intervention, and Regional
Autonomy 
Sorrow and Forgetting 
Hearing Voices: Gwich'in Athabaskan
Perceptions of Spirit Invasion and Recovery,
by Phyllis Fast 

5. The Politics of Repression 
The Ghost Dance Religion and the Suppression
of Prophecy 
The Potlatch Laws 
The Peyote Religion and Its Enemies 
Transgressions of Sacred Space 
Native Spiritual Traditions and the Tribal State:
The Oklahoma Choctaws in the Late Twentieth Century,
by Valerie Long Lambert 

6. The Collectors 
Ethnological Collecting 
Desecration and the Growth of Museums 
Bones and Spirits 
Repatriation 
Dialogue or Diatribe? Indians and
Archaeologists in the Post-NAGPRA Era,
by Michael Wilcox 
7. Apostles of the New Age 
Wild Men of Ideas 
The Oral and the Written 
Invention and Authenticity 
Suffering and Redemption 
Medicine Wheelers and Dealers,
by Bernard C. Perley 

8. Conclusions 

References Cited 
Index