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God Is Red: A Native View of Religion Kindle Edition
by Vine Deloria Jr. (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (310)
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First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition.
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"The flagship book on Native American spirituality remains Vine Delora's "God Is Red. He does an outstanding job of translating complex spiritual issues into very simple truths.
"Deloria's thinking on the subject of religion has lost none of its rage or relevance...since "God is Red" was first published. This book is broader than its subtitle suggests. It is a trenchant and often witty critique on non-Native religion through Native eyes." Awkekon Journal
"Deloria's handling of the contrast between Christianity and the naturalistic religion of the American Indians is rich in perceptiveness." Choice
"Vine Deloria, Jr. could be one of the most important living Native American writers, and insofar as there can be any hope of human survival in the face of civilization's insane onslaught, one of the most important writers ever to exist." -- The Bloomsbury Review
"The flagship book on Native American spirituality remains Vine Deloria's "God is Red." He does an outstanding job of translating complex spiritual issues into very simple truths." Wilma P. Mankiller, Former Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation
"--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Vine Deloria Jr., was a leading Native American scholar, whose research, writings, and teaching have encompassed history, law, religious studies, and political science. He is the former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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ASIN : B01N1YQS1H
Publisher : Fulcrum Publishing
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : 1 December 2016
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Print length : 345 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1682751152
Page Flip : Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: 210 in Native American Studies1,219 in Religious Philosophy (Books)
1,264 in Comparative Religion
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4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (310)
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4.6 out of 5 stars
Mario Parent
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in Canada on 15 August 2015
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Amazing analysis of the temporal and spacial history of the world.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Great Theology - But Disregard the PseudoscienceReviewed in the United States on 2 May 2020
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Vine Deloria's views were extremely helpful to me in my research into indigenous and first religions around the world. His explanation of the practices of American Indian religions aligned well with my own experience and understanding of spirituality centered on the natural world and all our divine relations.
His critique of modern Christianity was as fascinating and entertaining as it was important and cogent. His critique documents activities of U.S. Christians from the late 20th century that modern readers might find shocking and even LOL-worthy, while simultaneously offering profound and far-reaching insights into the question of *why* Christianity has taken so many strange turns on American soil.
The only weak point of the book is that the reader would do well to disregard Deloria's chapters on pseudoscience. He was a social scientist - not a physical scientist - and a few chapters of this book are spent in wildly incorrect speculation about astronomy and biology. Deloria seems to have given into the temptation to speak from his own inexpert understanding on some ideas that seemed appealing to him.
As someone who specializes in the physical sciences, I can 100% promise that Deloria's beloved Velitkovsky was wildly incorrect in his astronomical calculations, and that there is no alien DNA in any population of living things on Earth. We know how to verify these things with certainty now, and they're just not there.
That being said, this book was well worth the read for the unique cultural, historical, and religious insights Deloria brings to a theological field that has been dominated by Abrahamic and atheist thought to the almost complete exclusion of the first religions of every region of the world.
We'll be much more well-informed in understanding our religions and ourselves when we understand how and why human religion naturally arises, and how and why indigenous religions are still experience and practiced today.
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Cook
4.0 out of 5 stars Great bookReviewed in Canada on 29 March 2021
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Nice read. Some good points about religion and science. Some not so good points, I think some of the science is simplified, but a good read nonetheless.
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Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars Lucid theological and philosophical exposition of First Nations' religious practices and beliefsReviewed in the United States on 11 December 2022
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I learned about the philosophical and historical underpinnings of Native American religious practices beliefs from Deloria's original, thoughtful, and resistant account. It places the struggle for Native American communities' religious freedom in the context of American history, contrasting it with the Civil Rights movement, Black Power, Evangelical Fundamentalism, and traditional institutionalized Christianity. Very engaging.
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William S Jamison
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent summary of cultural warReviewed in the United States on 12 March 2009
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This is written from the point of view of an intellectual well versed in Western philosophy and religion but who is also well versed in American Indian Native religion. The chapters detail the stark differences between what he develops as warring cultures as he step by step describes the impact of Greek philosophy on Christian religion and how that molds the sense of individuality viewed as the modern individual in the West today. In contrast to this he describes the nature of community as seen through the eyes of natives and native religions that are land based instead of abstract conceptual systems. I find it interesting because other books such as Charles Taylor's "The Sources of the Self" make much the point he does in describing the nature of the modern individual and what brings it about. We might also see this in other books that deal with the subject. Of importance are several insightful points regarding the difficulties native communities face and how they have reacted to these culture wars. For example, regarding suicide he says, "Many people are trapped between tribal values constituting their unconscious behavioral responses and the values they have been taught in schools and churches, which primarily demand conforming to seemingly foreign ideals. Alcoholism and suicide mark this tragic fact of reservation life. People are not allowed to be Indians and cannot become whites. They have been educated, as the old-timers would say, to think with their heads instead of their hearts." (p 242) On the chapter between Natural and Hybrid Peoples he describes the Native religions as based on a sense of place - the importance of the land where "The soil you see is not ordinary soil - it is the dust of the blood, the flesh, and the bones of our ancestors. We fought and bled and died to keep other Indians from taking it, and we fought and bled and died helping the Whites. You will have to dig down through the surface before you can find nature's earth, as the upper portion is Crow." (p 148 quoting Curley, a Crow Indian Chief). (p. 247) "Education and Religion apparently do not mix."
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God Is Red: A Native View of Religion
Vine Deloria Jr., Leslie Marmon Silko
4.16
2,271 ratings238 reviews
First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr's God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world." It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria Jr's powerful voice, telling us about religious life that is independent of Christianity and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things.
GenresReligionNonfictionNative AmericanHistoryIndigenousSpiritualityPhilosophy
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325 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
Original title
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion
This edition
Format
325 pages, Paperback
Published
September 1, 2003 by Fulcrum Publishing
ISBN
9781555914981 (ISBN10: 1555914985)
ASIN
1555914985
Language
English
About the author
Vine Deloria Jr.54 books332 followers
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Vine Victor Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964–1967, he had served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing tribal membership from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and Washington, DC.
Deloria began his academic career in 1970 at Western Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington. He became Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona (1978–1990), where he established the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States. After ten years at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he returned to Arizona and taught at the School of Law.
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Clif Hostetler
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January 10, 2024
This book makes the case that traditional American Indian religion is best suited to meet human needs because of its emphasis on place and community. Christianity in contrast is based on time and history—a history that grew out of another land. Thus Indians can better cope with ecology and community issues. The Christian concept of God working in history through individual relationships with God leads to exploitation and indifference to community relationships.
This recent 2023 fourth edition of this book is unchanged from the 2003 third edition. Thus the summary history of the American Indian Movement and the literature/media review provided in the early chapters do not account for recent history since 2003. The body of the book after these introductory chapters concentrate on comparing traditional religions with Christianity with most comparisons intended to show the deficiencies of the Christian religion.
The book’s narrative is long, circular, and wanders occasionally into extraneous subjects where the author argues that scientists should pay more respectful attention to Indian creation myths. Thus there is discussion of astronauts from outer space, pre-Columbian contacts between the continents, and mythical cosmological happenings involving planets and stars.
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Jessaka
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March 26, 2023
This scholarly work by Vine Deloria, Jr. is a difficult read. You must really have a desire to learn Native American history accurately, and Vine Deloria is the right person for this endeavor as he was a Native American author, theologian, historian, and activist. I can imagine that this book is being used in colleges in their Native American classes, and I believe I would have preferred to have studied this with a professor than to have read it on my own, as I would have learned so much more than I had.
While this book took in the history of the Native Americans, even the political movement of the 70s, I will stick with the religious aspects of the book.
White Belly, photo by Edward Curtis
Many Native Americans rejected Christianity for various reasons but many were forced into Christianity. Holy grounds had been taken away, as were their religious ceremonies. Still, those who were the strongest, held onto their beliefs and fought for their rights.
There are many differences in Native American spirituality and the Christian religion, but I don't wish to take up all of them. For one thing, the Native Americans didn't have a personal God in the same sense as the Christians, nor did they believe that they needed a personal savior. It was never in their teaching; it didn't make sense to them.
In their religion there is no concept of "the fall," so the whole of creation was good and everything had to work together for the good of all. As Young Chief said: "The Great Spirit tells me to take care of the Indians, to feed them. The water says the same thing. Feed the Indians well. The grass says the same thing. Feed the Indians well. The ground says, The Great Spirit placed me here to produce all that grows on me, trees and fruit. The same way the ground says, It was from me man was made. The Great Spirit, in placing men on earth, desired them to take good care of the ground and to do each other no harm."
When Young Spirit said that the trees talk to him, he meant just that, for Walking Buffalo remarked, "Did you know that trees talk? Well they do. They talk to each other, and they'll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, white people don't listen. They never learned to listen to the Indians, so I don't suppose they'll listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees; sometimes about the weather, sometimes, about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit."
Vine Deloria believes that white man has become alienated from nature and believes he must tame it. As a result the earth is being destroyed.
Chief Luther Standing Bear wrote:
"We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and the winding streams with tangled growth as 'wild.' Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land infested with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was tame. The earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery."
As for a need to analyze or understand God, there is no reason to do so to the Indian. Deloris writes, "There is no discernible reason for primitive or tribal peoples to abandon their ceremonial life and spend their time trying to arrive at a clear description of a deity and its several powers. Religion for them is an experience and they have no reason to reduce it to systematic thought and the elaboration of concepts."
And as for death. Indians believe that they will return to nature and that their bodies will become dust but that their souls will either go on another journey or will come back to their tribe.
My thought is, if you are close to nature and believe in caring for it and for all life on it, you are close enough to God.
Winter Apsaroke, photo by Edward Curtis
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Brian
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August 6, 2016
This is a dense book that deals with a lot of issues, and I'm not going to be able to cover them all here because I have limited space and my reviews are long enough anyway. So, I'm not going go into depth on Native American history leading up to the 1970s, the legal basis for depriving the Native Americans of their land (though see Conquest by Law for an in-depth treatment on that), the romanticization of long-dead Indians while ignoring modern Indians' struggle for justice, and so on. They are in there, though.
The main interest I had in this book was in the religious analysis, which probably isn't surprising considering the title, so the initial modern history lesson in the beginning of the book kind of threw me off. But after setting the stage, it veers off and starts talking about Christianity in relation to Native religions, and that's where my interest really picked up.
G-d Is Red has a pretty uniformly negative view of Christianity. It starts off talking about a difference between religions with a temporal focus, like Christianity's view of the creation of the world, its doctrine as a series of revealed truths which resonate down to the present day, and its teleological and eschatological focus, and religions with a spacial focus that have a specific land where its practitioners live and specific holy places where the rites are practiced, like the old sacrificial cult of the Temple in pre-exilic Israelite religion--and I'm not just inserting that for egotistical reasons, because Deloria does make a connection that Judaism is one of the few mainstream religions that still has a lot of the characteristics of a tribal religion. Christianity's claim to apply to all people of all times makes its practitioners have an extremely difficult time understanding how other people can be tied to the land to the extent that, say, they're willing to turn down a large amount of money because they'd rather keep their land even when a lot of them are desperately poor, as happened with Blue Lake and the Taos Pueblo.
Deloria heavily criticizes this temporal focus, both for its supposed tendency to make Christians focus on the concerns of the next world at the expense of this one, and for its lack of any tie to the land along with the focus on stewardship or subduing the earth, leading to a lack of ecological awareness and directly contributing to the upcoming ecological catastrophe.
The main criticism, though, is about Christianity's universality. If Christianity is universal and is the true and correct religion, then how come its history is so filled with horrors? And if all those horrors were committed by people who aren't real Christians, then where are the real Christians and why didn't they stand up and try to stop all the murderers, or at least to speak out? This is an old criticism and dealt with extensively elsewhere, but what I liked was Deloria's mention that in claiming no innate cultural attributes, Christianity is vulnerable to taking on attributes of whatever culture it's practiced in. It's very easy to see the American culture in megachurches, television faith healers, stadium prayer revivals, and Christian rock, but a more nefarious example is how Christianity has been used to justify bigotry, torture, murder, slavery, and genocide throughout history. It's supposed to be transformative, but there's little evidence of that. In his words, Christianity can describe ideal behavior but cannot produce it.
The book then contrasts tribal religion with that, saying that since tribal religion is focused on the needs of a particular people and isn't generalizable outside that group, it doesn't produce the religious animus that Christianity does. Since the important point of the religion is the daily practice and the tribal rituals, and not the absolute truth of its claims about the past, increasing scientific discoveries do not automatically produce the somewhat-uncomfortable attitude that Christianity has with modernity. Tribes might war, and they might conquer each other, but they wouldn't try to impose their own religion on each other because the very idea makes no sense. The other tribe has different ancestors, so the idea of imposing on them other practices wouldn't even make sense. And the tie of tribes to particular land means that Native Americans are the spiritual owners of America, which is part of why the image of the Indian is evoked so often in ecological terms.
There are some obvious problems here, of course. Plenty of Christians are concerned with daily practice, plenty of Christians manage to maintain their religion while treating its claims as metaphors, and Deloria himself mentions that modern Native Americans with a more Western worldview are concerned about the scientific truth behind the claims of their ancestral religions. Some of these objections are dealt with, but in the interests of space I'll just mention that and go on.
I admit I've had some of these thoughts before, but in the modern world it's harder to talk about ancestral religions without dealing with the modern concept of race, and that leads you to creepy neopagan groups that bristle when black people want to join or the various neo-Nazis that give Asatru a bad name. The lack of community in Western culture is something that a lot of sociologists have noticed in books like Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, though. I admit that one of the best places I ever lived was in a small mountain town in Japan, where our students' grandparents farmed rice and the graves of their ancestors dotted the mountainsides around the town, but modern global capitalism is engaged in a relentless assault on the ability to live that kind of lifestyle with its requirements that everyone be always ready to learn a totally new skill and relocate to somewhere far away from friends and family. And it might have just as likely ended up with me being shut out of community life for being an outsider. At least if I'm experiencing modern alienation, I can be assured that my neighbors and I are together in our apartness.
There are some major flaws in the book, though. The first and most blatant is the bizarre diversion off into Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision and its theories about Venus being a comet and Venus and Mars ping-ponging around the solar system to produce many of the ancient accounts of miracles. Deloria even directly states that science is confirming more of his beliefs, and soon his theories will become accepted truth. The thing is...no, they won't. Velikovsky's theories are complete rubbish. You may say that I'm inculcated with Western views of scientific truth, and you'd be right, but this whole section hacked a star off the book all by itself because it's total nonsense.
Another one is how Deloria talks about tribal religions being designed for a particular people inhabiting a particular place, and not having the kind of universal claims that Christianity does, but then he treats them as some kind of block group with universal characteristics set up in contrast to Christianity. As one example, the Aztecs went out and conquered other tribes around them, and they did subject those tribes to their religion by demanding members of those tribes be surrended for their sacrificial rituals. That's part of why Cortés had such an easy time of it, because all the surrounding tribes hated the Aztecs so much that they were happy to help anyone who might be trouble. I don't know enough about the breadth of Native religions to provide an accurate commentary, but considering the hundreds of tribes that existed I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to find counterpoints to all of Deloria's points just by looking hard enough even if the general shape of his arguments is correct.
G-d Is Red is thought-provoking and dense, but I'm not really sure that it's that deep. It's also quite dated in its analysis of modern culture: the comments on the shape of women's rights and the loss of Christianity's influence look hilarious in light of the Republican Party's hatred of all that is good and pure, for example. Nonetheless, I'm glad I saw a recommendation to read it when I went to the National Museum of the American Indian, and if any of arguments within interest you I'd suggest that you read it too.
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Michaela Wood
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April 22, 2008
I really was amazed with the things Vine Deloria Jr. can tell you that you never thought to ask. His writing is a strong call to the kind of self-analysis that helps white Americans to grow up, examine their values, and shamed-faced ask the questions that have never occurred to them before. I feel like I could listen to these thoughts for the rest of my life on loop and only be the better for it.
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Plagued by Visions
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December 29, 2023
It uproots western theology with totality of wisdom. An astounding feat.
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Katherine
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October 6, 2007
I put this on the back burner, as it's not exactly "read for 10 minutes before bed" material, but it has given me many new things to think about. So far, his main point has been the difference between an emphasis on history and an emphasis on place. He argues that Native American religious belief is based on a strong connection to place, while many other belief systems emphasize history (especially Christianity, but he also mentions many other major religions). I'm pretty sure you could say the same for most indigenous belief systems. He argues that this greatly affects the ethical and moral behavior of the believers; Native American beliefs are more directed towards community, place, and current needs, while the rest of us are more directed towards moral codes that we usually don't feel a need to follow very closely. He believes that a return by Native Americans to their indigenous belief systems will help bring communities back together and work to heal some problems. At least that's what I've gathered from the first few chapters! In addition, one of the things that has really struck me is his statement that in this land (the US), God is red--ie, the indigenous belief system of all the land that we drive over, build houses, malls, and schools on, and generally foul up is that of its indigenous people. The rest of us are aliens! This book especially struck me on this point, as I picked it up at a bookstore on the Umatilla Reservation in Eastern Oregon and read it while in what was the homeland of the Nez Perce (until the white people decided it was choice territory and forced them into Idaho).
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Nathan
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November 28, 2009
Angry and polemical. Deloria has some painfully valid points, but he throws the baby out with the bath water along with the tub, shampoo and shower curtain. In relegating all but native religion to a nightmarish Oral Roberts/Jerry Falwell bogeyman of conservative evangelicalism, he damns his own thesis which, ostensibly, calls for respect and mutual flexibility. I don't deny the horrors that American Christianity has brought upon the First Peoples, but I do resent Deloria's assumption that Christianity is merely the sum of its worst adherents.
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Jody
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May 17, 2011
I really was expecting to hear the native view of God with stories from the various tribes. Instead it seemed to be an attack on Christian religions, and while I think there's a lot to be criticized about the way Christian religions are run, I could read that in any number of other books. I wanted a NATIVE view. I probably should have give this 1 star.
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Reiden
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September 17, 2012
The view of religion presented in this book was unlike anything I have heard taught in school (or church). I started reading this book while taking a comparative religions class. I wish I would finished it before the class ended; it would have given me much more to discuss. For instance, in class we learned about the evolution of religion, and how religions naturally go through several stages, ending in a monotheistic savior-God style of religion... hmm. Deloria attacks this type of thinking and shows how academic religious studies have primarily been conducted with a bias towards Western religions.
The book also explores the strong relationship Natives Americans have with the geography in which they have lived, as well as the plant and animal kingdom they encounter. Their religions are meant to help people survive harmoniously with the land. Also, unlike Western religions, those of the Native Americas lack theological dogma. Deloria shows how this lack of theology created healthier societies that were able to survive sustainably for long periods of time.
While he doesn't come out and say one style of religion is better than the other, he does build a case against Western religion - Christianity in most cases. I don't think this book would be an enjoyable read for anyone who follows a strong Christian belief system. Having said this, I think it would be a great read for anyone who lives in the US, as it offers a deeper understanding of why Natives to this day value their ancestral land so dearly.
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Steve Wiggins
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July 17, 2021
For those of us in North America (and likely South too), a residual guilt remains over our treatment of American Indians. It’s a guilt that can become consuming, but it is something we clearly must face. Not only the past, but the reprehensible treatment of these First Nations peoples continues to this day. While Vine Deloria’s classic deals mainly with religion, it is primarily about Indians and their lives. This is a book that has been on my reading list for years, and it disturbed me as much as I feared it would.
There are places for debate, of course, but Deloria shows (as noted elsewhere: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) what Christianity looks like from the outside. It has become an imperialistic, unforgiving, nearly inhumane religion. Offering theological justification for genocide and environmental degradation, it has brought us to the precipice of global warming and uncontrolled pollution of our only home. Deloria indicates that the Indian way was more holistic and that it has the capacity to heal the world. Of course, the Christian narrative predominates.
It’s difficult to summarize this important book in the usual space I allow myself in these reviews. It is wide-ranging but focused. And it is applicable anywhere that native peoples have been displaced by Christian conquerors. Deloria had a strong theological background and could speak to this aspect eloquently. Reading the book in the early post-Trump years revealed that it was in many ways ahead of its time. I will be going back to this book again. Often.
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