Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions

by Joseph Epes Brown

Book Overview

Teaching Spirits offers a thematic approach to Native American religious traditions. Through years of living with and learning about Native traditions across the continent, Joseph Epes Brown learned firsthand of the great diversity of the North American Indian cultures. Yet within this great multiplicity, he also noticed certain common themes that resonate within many Native traditions. These themes include a shared sense of time as cyclical rather...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195138759
• ISBN13: 9780195138757
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions

As a former student of the Joseph Epes Brown, I think Joseph expresses himself more clearly in this book than he was ever able to do in the classroom. It is the best summary of Native American religious traditions I have ever read. Delightful and surprising. I only wish he was still with us.

An informative book

I found this book a fascinating, especially for a required college textbook. In his introductary chapter, he is redundant and tries to give the air the Native American religions are much more full of meaning than Western European religions. I was glad to see the rest of the book didn't make such ethnocentric and blanketed statements. The rest of the book is a quick overview of Native American religion. It explains in a very easy manner about the way they live and the differences in their cultures, and provides various examples and humorous stories to demonstrate Brown's findings.In closing, I think this book is a must have for any anthropologist.