Despite significant strides over the past quarter century, Native peoples of North America face an uncertain future due to their unstable political, legal, and economic positions. Views of their predicament, however, continue to be dominated by non-Indian writers. In response, a dozen Native American writers here reclaim their rightful role as influential "voices" in the debates about Native communities at the dawn of a new millennium.

These scholars examine crucial issues of politics, law, and religion in the context of ongoing Native American resistance to the dominant culture. They...

This fascinating probe into U.S. mission history spotlights four cases: Junipero Serra, the Franciscan whose mission to California natives has made him a candidate for sainthood; John Eliot, the renowned Puritan missionary to Massachusetts Indians; Pierre-Jean De Smet, the Jesuit missioner to the Indians of the Midwest; and Henry Benjamin Whipple, who engineered the U.S. government's theft of the Black Hills from the Sioux.

Writing from a Native American perspective, theologian Tinker probes American Indian culture, its vast religious and cultural legacy, and its ambiguous relationship to the tradition--historic Christianity--that colonized and converted it. He offers novel proposals about cultural survival and identity, sustainability, and the endangered health of Native Americans.

Why Christian understandings of Jesus and God clash with American Indian worldviews. "Tink" Tinker of the Osage Nation describes the oppression suffered by American Indians since the arrival of European colonists, who brought a different worldview across the ocean and attempted to convert the native population to the religion they also imported. The methodology, language, and understandings of Christian beliefs of the colonists????????????????????????and the majority society since the colonial period????????????????????????have largely failed to Christianize the native population. Different...