A study of indigenous peoples’ traditional teachings about the relationship of spirituality, ecology, and community well-being. A particular focus will be the words and works of representative twentieth century writers and spiritual leaders, and include the life and teachings of Lakota elder Black Elk; Muskogee elder Phillip Deere; Wanapum elder David Sohappy; and Dakota scholar and activist Vine Deloria, Jr.
Course Objectives
Five centuries after the arrival of Europeans on the shores of what is known now as the Americas, indigenous peoples retain worldviews with an ancient history. While some perspectives have been influenced by or abandoned to ideas and social structures from newer cultures, such inculturation has not meant complete theoretical or practical assimilation. In particular, the reverence of native peoples for Mother Earth, and their efforts to live in harmony with her, have continued through time. Adherents of diverse religious traditions have reflected on the relationship between their faith and their Earth home over millennia. In the United States during the latter decades of the twentieth century, indigenous peoples in particular have offered to a broader audience their perspectives on the link between their spiritual beliefs and their ecological context.
Course objectives include:
- understanding indigenous peoples’ principal Earth-related spiritual teachings;
- knowledge of recurring ecological themes that permeate spiritual concepts, and their relationship to current ecological concerns;
- awareness of the diversity of indigenous peoples in the U.S., the distinctiveness of their respective beliefs, and their expressions of complementary and congruent beliefs;
- formulation of ways to benefit from indigenous peoples’ ecological and spiritual traditions–which emerge from their social and ecological contexts and relate to complementary concepts in dominant U.S. religions–to address contemporary ecological problems and human rights issues, and promote the commons good and the common good;
- knowledge of the relationship between Christianity and native U.S. cultures, including of how some native scholars have sought to reshape the Christian tradition, while other scholars and elders have rather affirmed more ancient understandings and practices; and
- understanding of the relationship between native belief and practices, as in other traditions, so that native peoples and cultures are neither vilified nor romanticized, but understood in the complexity of their places and times, from the time of first contact with Europeans through the 21st century.
Course Texts
Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Recorded and edited by John G. Neihardt.. (New York: Pocket Books, 1972)
The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux
Recorded and edited by Joseph Epes Brown. (New York: Penguin Books, 1976)
Vine Deloria, Jr., Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999)
John Hart, Sacramental Commons: Christian Ecological Ethics (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Oren Lyons and John Mohawk, eds., Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Clear Light Books, 1998)
Charles C. Mann. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Vintage, 2006.
George E. Tinker, Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2004)
Jace Weaver, ed., Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996)
Steve Wall and Leon Shenandoah, To Become A Human Being: The Message of Tadodaho Chief
Leon Shenandoah (Charlottesville, VA: Hamilton Roads Publishing, 2001)
Course Resources
Interviews
Phillip Deere, Muskogee: Montana and Oklahoma interviews, 1984-85.
David Sohappy, Sr., Wanapum: Spokane, Washington prison letters and interviews, 1987-1988.
Videos
“The Faithkeeper: An Interview with Oren Lyons” (Bill Moyers; PBS documentary)
“In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” (PBS)
“Incident at Oglala”
“The Good Mind”
“River People: In the Case of David Sohappy.” (1990)
“Pow Wow Highway”
Music
John Trudell, excerpts from the CDs “Bone Man” (Daemon Records, 2002); “Johnny Damas and Me” (Rykodisc, 1994); and “AKA Grafitti Man” (Rykodisc, 1992).
Floyd Red Crow Westerman, excerpts from the CD “Custer Died for Your Sins/The Earth Is Your Mother” (Trikont, 1993)
Course Outline: Topic Reading
*[Add: 1491 text at beginning.]
Week 1: Introduction: Mother Earth in Native Traditions
Week 2: Commons Good and Common Good Hart, SC, ch. 1; ch. 4
Week 3: Historical Contexts for Native Spirituality, 1 Lyons & Mohawk, Parts I-III; DVD: In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Week 4: Historical Contexts for Native Spirituality, 1 Lyons & Mohawk, Parts IV-V; DVD: The Faithkeeper
Week 5: The Plains 1: Black Elk, traditional elder Black Elk, BES; SROS
Week 6: The Plains, 2: Vine Deloria and cultural renewal Deloria, S&R, Parts I-III; DVD: Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story
Week 7: The Plains, 3: Vine Deloria and Lakota spirituality Deloria, S&R, Parts IV-V
Week 8: The Southwest: Phillip Deere and the Muskogee Hart, SC, ch. 3; DVD: The Good Mind
Week 9: The Northeast: Leon Shenandoah/the Haudenosaunee Wall and Shenandoah
Week 10: The Northwest: David Sohappy and the Wanapum Hart, SC, ch. 6; DVD: River People: In the Case of David Sohappy
Week 11: Theology, Politics and Liberation Tinker
Week 12: Environmental Justice Weaver
Week 13: Poetic voices and Course reflections; Music: John Trudell, Floyd Westerman
Course Supplemental Texts
Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984)
Vine Deloria, The World We Used To Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006)
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th anniversary edition (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2003)
Singing for a Spirit: A Portrait of the Dakota Sioux (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Clear Light Books, 2000)
Red Earth, White Lies (Fulcrum, 1997)
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (University of Oklahoma Press, 1988)
Winona LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2005)
All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999)
Click Relander, Drummers and Dreamers (Seattle, WA: Northwest Interpretive Association, 1986)
Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, Dreamer-Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.)
Roberta Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999)
Frank Waters, The Book of the Hopi (Penguin, 1977)
Course Instructor
John Hart, Professor of Christian Ethics, Boston University School of Theology, has worked with traditional indigenous elders and human rights proponents for almost three decades. He has been a Member of the Delegation of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), a Non-Governmental Organization accredited to the United Nations, to U.N. International Human Rights Commission (UNIHRC) sessions in Geneva, Switzerland (the IITC Board of Directors includes Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Maya-Quiché from Guatemala and 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate); helped to document human rights issues for indigenous peoples at meetings of the IITC, for presentation to the UNIHRC; and recorded interviews, for publication, with traditional spiritual leaders/healers/human rights activists Phillip Deere (1926-1985) and David Sohappy, Sr. (1925-1991). He discusses the relationship between spirituality, ecology and human rights in the teachings of indigenous peoples of the U.S. in his books and articles, including Sacramental Commons (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), for which the Lakota leader William Means, a founding member of the American Indian Movement and a member of the Board of Directors of the IITC, has written a book cover endorsement:
Sacramental Commons reminds people that Indigenous Peoples’ struggles for sovereignty and human rights continue today. John Hart honors the life and teachings of Phillip Deere and David Sohappy, spiritual leaders and healers who promoted justice for Indigenous Peoples and respect for Mother Earth. In their spirit, all people should walk with the Creator and care for our sacred Mother Earth. Mitakuye Oyasin. We are all related.
This syllabus pertains to when the course was offered in 2008