God Is Red

Introduction

Vine Deloria Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux writer and activist, published the book in 1973; a thirtieth-anniversary edition followed in 2003. He argues that Christianity and Western thought are oriented to time and history – a linear story of creation, fall and salvation – while Native American religions are bound to particular places, to the land and to the community of living beings. This difference shapes attitudes to nature, community and the sacred. Deloria criticises Christianity’s role in conquest and its failure to protect the natural world, and calls for the protection of sacred sites and for religious freedom for Native peoples. The book became a founding text of Native American religious and philosophical studies.

Connections

Taken up in

• Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition2014 · Glen Sean Coulthard
• Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land2019 · Brian Burkhart