Reviews for Native North American Religious Traditions: Dancing for Life

The average rating for Native North American Religious Traditions: Dancing for Life based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-11 00:00:00 Kathleen Cook This is a frustrating book. On the one hand, it contains a good bit of useful information on Native American rituals, much of it based on first-hand observation/participation by Prof. Paper. The discussions of the peyote religion of the Native American Church and of the Sacred Pipe and its significance are especially helpful. The book is also tantalizing for the questions it raises about scholarly distance versus direct participation by religious studies researchers. Much of what Paper writes is based on his own acknowledgement of the reality of the sacred powers he has studied, and that brings up a whole range of fascinating theoretical issues. On the other hand, you'll need to ignore large chunks of the book in which Paper contrasts Native American and Western religious traditions, especially Christianity, because his versions of the former are seldom better than caricature. For a York University Emeritus in Religious Studies, Paper seems to know surprisingly little about Western religions and to understand less. So we are told that unlike "virtually every human culture," the monotheistic traditions set the masculine Sky God/Creator as the opponent of feminine Earth, which Paper identifies as Hell and "the locus of evil" (p. 8) One could be forgiven for wondering if Paper has ever read the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Qur'an, as his version of Jewish/Christian/Islamic mythology is not even close to anything adherents of the Biblical and Qur'anic traditions would recognize. Again, we are apprised of the fact that unlike Native American traditions, Christianity is completely theological/propositional and non-experiential, with the exception of Pentecostal churches (p. 12). This ignores the sacramental life of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions as well as the conversion experience of the Evangelical and Pietist traditions. Things become really bizarre when Paper discusses environmental activists' attempts to thwart the revival of the whale hunt ritual among Northwest Coast tribes. He characterizes these activists' opposition as being fueled by conservative Christianity, a nearly ludicrous proposition. It seems pointless to mention additional examples, though there are many (Paper must have a serious axe to grind). None of this is that important, I suppose, in a book about Native American religions, except that Paper wants to use these oppositions to further understanding of his primary subject matter.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-27 00:00:00 Francisco Javier Herranz Sanchez Reread