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First Nations/Native 
Americans and Religion
Bibliographic Conversation and 
Recommendations
Presenters:  
Jane Lenz Elder, Bridwell Library Reference, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas 
David Schmersal, Access and Instruction Librarian, Stitt Library, Austin Presbyterian Theo-
logical Seminary

ABSTR ACT A quick search using the subject “Indians of North Amer-
ica – Religion” in Bridwell Library’s catalog retrieved 130 results out of 
a collection of about 490,000 volumes. This suggests (a) The Library of 
Congress may want to consider revising some of its subject headings 
(but that is a topic for another time), (b) religious and spiritual practices 
among native North Americans/First Nations are not widely studied by 
our students. While there are certainly exceptions, likely this situation is 
not unique among theological libraries. This session represents an effort 
to rectify this by sharing and inviting colleagues to share recommenda-
tions of resources on spirituality and religious beliefs and practices of 
various native North American/First Nations groups and their relation to 
the faith traditions that are more broadly represented in our collections.

JANE LENZ ELDER, BRIDWELL LIBRARY REFERENCE, PERKINS 
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY, DALLAS, TEXAS

“In this effort to convert the American Indians [John Wesley] was, of course, 
singularly unsuccessful.” Encyclopedia of World Methodism (1974, p. 1201a)

I have to admit that I chuckled over this quotation. In my life prior 
to theological librarianship, I did a lot of work in the history of the 
Americas, or the “New World” as Europe and its adventurers called 
it. Thus, my perspective is historical, and my understanding of the 
consequences of the encounters between Europeans and Native 



Listen and Learn  163

North Americans (per the LC subject heading) can be summed up as 
one long, profound, and ongoing misunderstanding of one another. 
Sometimes it was violent, sometimes accommodating, but the power 
dynamics were rarely equal.

This session is intended for sharing “recommendations of 
resources on spirituality and religious beliefs and practices of various 
native North American/First Nations groups and their relation to the 
faith traditions that are more broadly represented in our collections.” 
Before we get started with our conversation, then, I wanted to make 
five brief points. These suggestions are not about specific resources so 
much as guidelines to keep in the back of our minds as we undertake 
studies of indigenous cultures and assist others in their undertakings. 

First, most obviously, this is a really big topic. This map of the 
western hemisphere represents broad linguistic groupings of peoples 
indigenous to the Americas. From a European perspective we are 
talking about two continents, five centuries, three empires, half a 
dozen colonial powers, nearly three dozen post-colonial nations (if 
we count the Caribbean and Central and South America), innumer-
able groupings of native peoples both pastoral and nomadic, extinct 
or surviving, each with their own cosmological variation. Overlaying 
that with the Christian religion in its myriad denominations further 
complicates the subject. Anyone undertaking research in this area 
will need to narrow the focus of their project pretty pronto lest they 
drown in a tsunami of material. 

Second, in the last generation most scholars have come to accept 
that various European diseases wiped out possibly as many as twenty 
million indigenous Americans, some of whom had never even encoun-
tered a European, such was the speed with which disease spread. 
European primary source material describes expeditions entering 
villages devoid of life—their inhabitants having either died or fled. 
Entire populations simply collapsed. Consider the implications such 
a drastic shift in population held for religion and religious practices. 
For comparison consider the European plague pandemic of the four-
teenth century which contributed to the multi-faceted Crisis of the 
Late Middle Ages. Further, in primarily oral societies, how are culture 
and theology sustained when everyone succumbs to disease? 

A third issue to bear in mind at the outset of any inquiry is the 
historic record, which in European terms, means a written record. 



164  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

Researchers need to develop a keen sense of the worldviews of the 
observers as well as those they observe. Before the advent of Anthro-
pology and Ethnology as scholarly disciplines in the nineteenth 
century, the people who most frequently lived with, or in proxim-
ity to, indigenous groups in the Americas tended to be missionar-
ies. Through their efforts a rich collection of written primary source 
material regarding indigenous religion, culture, and practices has 
been preserved, but these are vexed materials. Researchers need to 
ask themselves what preconceived notions were held by those writ-
ing for the historic record. Were they steeped in Dryden’s depictions 
of the Noble Savage, Alexander Pope’s romantically primitive “Lo! 
The poor Indian . . . ,” or, conversely, did they subscribe to the image 
of bloodthirsty demons whose only hope for redemption was a forced 
imposition of an equally bloodthirsty form of Christianity? Between 
these two extremes fall a wide range of perspectives, each colored to 
a greater or lesser extent by the lenses through which these record-
ers viewed their situation. 

Fourth, academic disciplines, as we all know, are a modern 
Western construct. These artificial silos demand the use of a variety 
of disciplinary resources to get where we want to go in the study of 
indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere.  For example, aspects 
of indigenous religious practices, ancient or modern, might wind 
up with subject headings (another modern construct) that fall in the 
areas listed here:

• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Art
• Art History
• Demography
• Economics
• Environmental Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Ethnography

• First Nations Studies
• History
• Literature
• Native American Studies
• Regional (Geographic) 

Studies 
• Religious Studies
• Sociology
• Theology



Listen and Learn  165

Further, resources in one area might compensate for the dearth of 
resources in another. For example, if indigenous voices do not speak 
much in the historical record, they may have greater volume in the 
archaeological record. The use of more than one kind of resource in 
more than one area of study can yield more and better results.

While this list can look daunting, especially in today’s superabun-
dance of information, determining sound project parameters can help 
to focus researchers in specific areas. The best approaches include 
interacting with sources using an analytical mind, combined with 
respect and sensitivity; using sound methodology; cross-checking 
sources against one another; identifying your source’s biases at the 
outset; and consulting a wide variety of sources. Above all, seek indig-
enous voices, expertise, and authority throughout your work.

Once upon a time, a MacArthur “genius grant” winner, Ramón 
Gutiérrez, wrote a book called When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers 
Went Away (1991). While lauded at the time for the use of ground-
breaking methodology, the book nevertheless proved “celebrated 
but controversial,” in the words of reviewer and ethnologist Sylvia 
Rodriguez. Other reviewers called it “arrogant,” “imperialistic,” and 
“appropriative.” In New Mexico, Pueblo Indian groups, whose history 
and culture represented a significant portion of the book’s content, 
went ballistic over it. Scholarly debate continued for some years 
over the work, with Gutiérrez meeting his critics and defending his 
position.  Which brings me to my final point: We all need to cultivate 
what my colleague David Schmersal refers to as Critical Humility.  
Scholar Alison Freese outlined the ways in which Gutiérrez failed to do 
this in his book. Of her seven objections, three in particular stand out:

Information from one Native American group [was] used for other 
groups, regardless of cultural, geographic, or temporal distance.

One example was all that [was} needed to prove a key generaliza-
tion.

Ethnographic information gathered up to 500 years after conquest 
and colonization [was] used to describe precontact aboriginal cultures.

I can hear you say now, “Yeah, Jane, but this book came out in 
the 1990s. That was a long time ago and nobody read it anyway.” In 
response I’d suggest that 1) this book was standard graduate school 
reading in history for at least a decade and 2) it was Stanford Univer-



166  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

sity Press’s bestselling publication of all time. In other words, this 
book, for all its faults, has a Very. Long. Reach.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the five points 
mentioned above are not merely academic or historic. One has only 
to scan the news to see that indigenous peoples of the present continue 
to deal with issues regarding their right to maintain and control their 
own physical resources, cultural expressions (including religion), 
and sovereignty. Resistance to Euro-American appropriation does 
not simply refer to the territorial encroachments of the past. In terms 
of religion, we see the threat to sacred sites posed by the Keystone 
Pipeline. We see the commodification of sacred objects and symbols 
to sustain much-needed tourist dollars. In the U.S. we struggle with 
religious debates over the gaming industry. Examples such as these 
abound. 

DAVID SCHMERSAL, ACCESS AND INSTRUCTION LIBRARIAN, 
AUSTIN PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Before opening our session for conversation, I would like to take just 
a few minutes to consider how we might apply some of the points 
Jane has made in our contexts and in our vocations as theological 
librarians. When proposing this session, we identified as learning 
objectives that participants would “come away with a list of recom-
mended titles on ‘Native Americans/First Nations and spirituality/
religion’ to consider including in their libraries’ collections” and 
would “come away with greater familiarity with some of the essential 
reference works, primary texts, and secondary sources to recommend 
to students who are researching topics pertaining to ‘Native Ameri-
cans/First Nations and spirituality/religion.’” 

To this end, while I was still Reference and Digital Services Librar-
ian at Bridwell Library, I created a LibGuide: Native American Religion 
https://bridwellguides.smu.edu/c.php?g=921636. As with all such 
guides, my purpose in creating this (in addition to fulfilling, in part 
at least, two of the objectives of this session) is threefold: (1) To famil-
iarize myself with a subject area and with relevant library resources, 
especially if it is a subject of which I have limited prior knowledge, (2) 
To offer students, colleagues, and other researches a starting point 
for beginning research when I am not available to offer assistance in 

https://bridwellguides.smu.edu/c.php?g=921636
https://bridwellguides.smu.edu/c.php?g=921636


Listen and Learn  167

person, and (3) To serve as a reference for my own research and while 
assisting others, reminding me of sources I have found useful, rele-
vant, and interesting. In other words, I create such guides to compen-
sate for my being ignorant, absent, or forgetful.  

This trifecta of motivation was especially true in this case. Native 
American history, culture, and religion are topics in which I had done 
little prior reading and research. Moreover, the process of creating this 
guide proved to offer a gauntlet of problematic terms and perspec-
tives, exacerbated by the relative paucity of materials I was able to 
discover in our collections. I thus present this, not as a final, compre-
hensive product of an expert, but as an initial step in what I hope 
will be a fruitful discussion of the ways we can support, and further, 
research in this area. 

DISCUSSION

Lively conversation occurred once the formal aspects of the presen-
tation were done. Of particular note was the contribution of Cindy 
Derrenbacker, who introduced the group to NAITS, an Indigenous 
Learning Community (https://www.naiits.com/). According to their 
website, “NAIITS, is one of the three divisions of Indigenous Pathways, 
a non-sectarian organization dedicated to encouraging the Indig-
enous community to develop and to articulate Indigenous perspec-
tives on theology and practice.” It is an excellent resource and one that 
everyone in the room was happy to learn about.

SOURCES CITED:

Sylvia Rodríguez, “Subaltern Historiography on the Rio Grande: On 
Gutiérrez’s When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away,” American 
Ethnologist 21, no. 4 (Nov. 1994): 892–899.

Jojola, Ted, Alison Freese, et al. “‘When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers 
Went Away: Marriage, Sex, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846,’ 
by Ramón A. Gutiérrez (discussion on the Mythologizing of Native 
Americans in the Academic World),” American Indian Culture and 
Research Journal 17, no. 3 (1993): 141–177.

https://www.naiits.com/

