Native American Religions

by Paula R. Hartz, Joanne O'Brien (Editor), Martin Palmer (Editor)

Native American religions consist of a set of basic attitudes which relate people to their natural surroundings. This third edition presents the history of Native American religions from their roots as tribal religions through the detremental effects of European colonisation to their sudden restoration in the 20th century.

Genres: Religion, Native Americans, Nonfiction, Cultural, History

144 pages, Library Binding

First published May 1, 1997

Reviews

[ReadingWench · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative yet interesting.

This book is not only good for a teen doing a report on Native American culture, the parent may want to read this just to educate themselves as well.

Knowledge and education are the keys to eliminating prejudices and ignorance.

[Hannah Lulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seems fine. I am a non-Native person. It's kind of a survey of different aspects of different Native American religions. It seems like too huge of a topic to cover in one middle-school level book. So, is it a comprehensive overview or even introduction? No, but I don't see how it could be. I think the book is fair in that it knows what it's not. But it seems like a respectful albeit meager introduction that values the topic it seeks to illuminate. It talks about how vast the topic is and it's own inadequacy in covering it in the space given. It seems well organized and has nice pictures. It talks about colonialism and how Native American religious practice was made illegal in the US. As far as the topic of religion in general, the excerpts of religious practice and myth are thought provoking in that they inspire me to reflect on the way religious rites and practices affect the way we as people relate to each other, maintain community, and make sense of our experiences. It seems like the book does a good job of distinguishing individual tribal practices as just that, rather than lumping them all together. There's nothing that jumps out at me (as a non-Native person) as being badly or offensively talked about, and I think if you were covering a middle-school or even high school level survey of world religions it makes an acceptable inclusion in your reference materials, something that is better to have than to not have.

[Giovannij · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read and well documented.

[Leah Markum · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a basic, non-intimidating introduction to Native American religions among the tribes historically located in what is now the United States and Canada. Considering the hundreds of tribes on the continent, this book does a good job of showcasing aspects of religion and society that are common even from the Zuni in the Southwest and the Ojibwe in the Northeast. However, because of the great breadth of the topic, this book does not go into depth beyond specific examples from a handful of tribes. This makes the book good to read if you don't know where to start to learn about Native American culture and you can develop specific ideas to study from here.

As a general book with relatively little text (it was in the teen section of my library and has larger font and lots of images--GOOD, fascinating images) I still managed to take several pages worth of notes of useful references and interesting trivia, which is one of my criteria for ranking nonfiction reads, and earns a solid 4 Stars.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opened my eyes to where a few christian sects originated from.