Religious Traditions of Indigenous Peoples

My primary research focus is in the religious traditions of indigenous peoples, especially Native North Americans. My expertise includes religion and culture; religion and ethnicity; myth, ritual, and symbol theory; and religious identity.

I am interested in how social constructions such as ethnicity and gender relate to issues of belief and religious worldview. It seems to me that the primary role of the construct “religion” is to contribute to the organizational matrices that comprise what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field,” – the setting in which each social actor is situated. In addition, religion can both provide and alter an individual’s social toolkit, thus becoming an important factor in the creation and maintenance of both individual and collective identity. Tribal people can use – and be used by – their status as “indigenous” in the navigation of contemporary circumstances influenced by religion: social, political, and economic power.