This book offers fascinating insights into the world of the pre-reservation Indians. It is a collection of classic essays that examines the universal characteristics of American Indian culture and tradition. This new edition also offers a personal view of Dr. Brown's life and research through his private correspondence from his time on the reservation and sheds insights into his relationship with old time Indian leaders including the legendary Sioux Medicine Man Black Elk.

In this collection of essays, the chief components of Indian religions and our perceptions of them are treated in sensitive manner.

Teaching Spirits offers a thematic approach to Native American religious traditions. Through years of living with and learning about Native traditions across the continent, Joseph Epes Brown learned firsthand of the great diversity of the North American Indian cultures. Yet within this great multiplicity, he also noticed certain common themes that resonate within many Native traditions. These themes include a shared sense of time as cyclical rather than linear, a belief that landscapes are inhabited by spirits, a rich oral tradition, visual arts that emphasize the process of creation, a reciprocal relationship with the natural world, and the rituals that tie these themes together. Brown illustrates each of these themes with in-depth explorations of specific native cultures including Lakota, Navajo, Apache, Koyukon, and Ojibwe. Brown was one of the first scholars to recognize that Native religions-rather than being relics of the past-are vital traditions that tribal members shape and adapt to meet both timeless and contemporary needs. Teaching Spirits reflects this view, using examples from the present as well as the past. For instance, when writing about Plains rituals, he describes not only building an impromptu sweat lodge in a Denver hotel room with Black Elk in the 1940s, but also the struggles of present-day Crow tribal members to balance Sun Dances and vision quests with nine-to-five jobs. In this groundbreaking work, Brown suggests that Native American traditions demonstrate how all components of a culture can be interconnected-how the presence of the sacred can permeate all lifeways to such a degree that what we call religion is integrated into all of life's activities. Throughout the book, Brown draws on his extensive personal experience with Black Elk, who came to symbolize for many the richness of the imperiled native cultures. This volume brings to life the themes that resonate at the heart of Native American religious traditions.

Growing up, I knew two things to be true: My dad was a drunk. Being an Indian was complicated. When I joined the Navy, these two ideas were cemented when my fellow sailors, after finding out that I was an American Indian, would ask me if I drank a lot or if I still lived in a TeePee. They were asking questions because that’s what they knew and I couldn’t blame them. I could only answer “no” to both. These questions, posed by my curious new friends, made me wish that I knew more about my background, about me. Dad tried to teach us the language, the culture, what it meant to be Ojibwe. But no one wants to learn from a drunken Indian, least of all, me. Then, in the winter of 1980, my dad nearly died. When he awoke, everything changed. This is his story. Warrior Spirit Rising is the inspiring true account of Gene Goodsky, as told through the eyes of his oldest daughter, Dianna. Gene was raised in the North Woods of Minnesota, on the tribal lands of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa. Surviving years of cultural genocide, racism, and the Vietnam War left him broken—battling severe PTSD and alcohol abuse. In this stunning tale of Native American perseverance, Good Sky unravels the history of her father, her family, and her people, and the near-death experience that would change their lives forever. With both wit and honesty, she explores the devastating loss of heritage that has impacted generations of Native Americans, and how the powerful choice to forgive can leave a legacy.

During his 1984 visit to Canada, Pope John Paul II declared, Christ, in the members of his body, is himself Indian. Who is this native Christ? What is his place in the spiritual universe of native people? Achiel Peelman examines these questions in this timely and groundbreaking book, which is the result of research he has carried out since 1982 in native communities across Canada. While Peelman's book is a work of theology and Christology, it is also a work of profound friendship that will help its readers know more deeply the Amerindian experience.

This book explores three themes: the timeless messages of traditional Religion; the modern obscuration of this perennial Wisdom; and the spiritual encounter between East and West. Topics include the Australian Aborigines, the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, and key Perennialist figures such as Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Huston Smith. Characterizing modernism as "a spiritual disease which is spreading like a plague across the globe," Oldmeadow offers insightful criticisms of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and what he calls the "false prophets of modernity."

A “profound and inspiring” collection of ancient indigenous wisdom for “anyone wanting the healing of self, society, and of our shared planet” (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma). A Penobscot Indian draws on the experiences and wisdom of the First Nations to address environmental justice, water protection, generational trauma, and more. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our day—including indigenous land rights, environmental justice, and our collective human survival. Sharing the gifts she has received from the elders of her tribe, the Penobscot Nation, she asks us to look deeply into the illusions we have labeled as truth and which separate us from our higher mind and from one another. Sacred Instructions explains how our traditional stories set the framework for our belief systems and urges us to decolonize our language and our stories. It reveals how the removal of women from our stories has impacted our thinking and disrupted the natural balance within our communities. For all those who seek to create change, this book lays out an ancient world view and set of cultural values that provide a way of life that is balanced and humane, that can heal Mother Earth, and that will preserve our communities for future generations.