| Summary: |
Spirit Wars is an exploration of the ways in which the destruction of spiritual practices and beliefs of native peoples in North America has led to conditions of collective suffering--a process sometimes referred to as cultural genocide. Ronald Niezen approaches this topic through wide-ranging case studies involving different colonial powers and state governments: the seventeenth-century Spanish occupation of the Southwest, the colonization of the Northeast by the French and British, nineteenth-century westward expansion and nationalism in the swelling United States and Canada, and twentieth-century struggles for native peoples' spiritual integrity and freedom. Each chapter deals with a specific dimension of the relationship between native peoples and non-native institutions: missions, formal education, bio-medicine, legislative bodies, museums and research institutions, and New Age spiritual literature and organizations. Together these topics yield a new understanding of the forces directed against the underpinning of native cultures. Not only direct missionary efforts, Niezen makes clear, but other practices intended by the dominant societies to be philanthropic have had a devastating impact on native societies. The chapters are supplemented by brief essays from six other authors, each of whom provides case material - some of it from a first-person native perspective - that shows the contemporary relevance for native peoples of the issues being discussed. |
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