Vine Deloria describes the state of religion in the United States as it pertains to both caucasian history and beliefs and native history and beliefs. He describes the way that the Christian religion has failed the earth and is now failing people and the ways in which tribal religions are better able to help people live good and fulfilling lives in harmony with each other and with the planet. Some highlights include: a rationalization of the 'ancient astronauts' theory, a log of how natives have been treated ever since the Europeans showed up, and an overall effective discussion of the difference in paradigm between native/traditional religions of the world, and large modernized religions such as Christianity.

This book certainly had its flaws, the most annoying being horrendous editing. As a third edition, this really should have been proofread at some point, right? It is chock full of typos, really obvious ones, and sentences that no matter how many times I read, I couldn't understand what they meant (i.e. extremely poor grammar/sentence structure).

That said, this book really gave me a lot to think about. Deloria often draws conclusions or makes comparisons that I wouldn't, and I often felt that he's doing more comparing to Christianity than explaining Native American religion, but I guess that's important in order for a reader like me to be able to see the difference in paradigm. It's definitely not an unbiased analysis though (not sure one can exist...) so it has to be read carefully. I think Deloria's goal isn't so much to explain what we think of as "religion" - for Christians (many) and for non-religious American folks (nearly all), religion is one little piece of ourselves/our lives. For Native Americans, it's all tied up in culture and daily life. Rather than being worldwide and prescriptive, or personal and individual, it's tribal/community based and it's culture/politics, everything. It's what they actually do and why.

The author doesn't think Christianity can be this - I think it could. Though I agree with him that it will take a lot. Conservative Christians are heading off the deep end and liberal Christians are dropping like flies as they get disenchanted by the craziness and don't want any association with it. But even Christianity has roots - roots that Deloria goes into - and these are just as valid as the roots of Native American tribal relgions and I don't think they're based on ancient astronauts. I think some people see this book as an attack because it isn't the new-agey description of Native American religious practices they expected. Some chapters are an attack, but that's not why. Deloria does an excellent job of stepping back and saying, hey wait, we can't explain our beliefs without you first letting go of your paradigm for religion and understanding that ours functions in a fundamentally different way.

Themes: Native Americans, religion, Christianity, the land/North American continent, history, philosophy, culture, politics