For This Land: Writings on Religion in America

Vine Deloria, Jr.

Oct 2013 · Routledge

About this eBook

First Published in 1999. For This Land, edited and with an introduction by James Treat, brings together over thirty years of the work of Vine Deloria, Jr., regarded as one of the most important living Native American figures. For three decades, Deloria has offered substantive and persistent contributions to understanding the complexity of religion in America. In uis writings he recognizes the spiritual desperation and religious breakdown in the contemporary situation, and provides the groundwork to get people to examine what they actually believe and how they must put those beliefs into practice. The essays in this collection express Deloria's concern for the religious dimensions and implications of human existence. His writings are engaged within a theoretical system of physical, not ideological, space, and ultimately give voice to this intellectual passion by calling into question our controversial religious institutions, commitments, worldviews, freedoms and experiences. For This Land offers a distinctive approach to comprehending human existence from one of the leading critics of mainstream American thought.

About the author

Vine Deloria, Jr., a member of the Standing Rock SiouxTribe of North Dakota and former director of the NationalCongress of American Indians, is Professor of History atthe University of Colorado. He is the author of numerousbooks, including Red Earth, White Lies (1995), God isRed (1973), and Custer Died for your Sins (1969).JamesTreatteaches in the Honors College at the University ofOklahoma. He edited Native and Christian: IndigenousVoices on Religious Identity in the United States andCanada, also published by Routledge.