Myth & Storytelling
In the academic study of religion, this term refers to a meaningful narrative, not necessarily a false story.
What is a myth?
This scholar connects the study of myth to ideology, authority, and power.
Who is Bruce Lincoln?
Vizenor uses this term to describe active Indigenous presence and agency rather than disappearance or victimhood.
What is survivance?
This Indigenous religious movement emphasized spiritual renewal and hope amid the devastating conditions of colonialism.
What is the Ghost Dance?
This term describes a place understood as spiritually significant through relationships, traditions, and religious practices.
What is sacred space?
This form of transmitting stories, histories, and teachings across generations does not depend on written texts.
What is oral tradition?
This Potawatomi intellectual and author is known for birch bark writings that preserve and communicate cultural knowledge.
Who is Simon Pokagon?
Vizenor critiques these invented or stereotypical images of Native peoples that circulate as though they were authentic.
What are simulations?
This 1890 massacre is closely associated with the suppression of the Ghost Dance.
What is Wounded Knee?
These South Dakota mountains are presented as a sacred Lakota homeland in The Lakota Nation versus the United States.
What are the Black Hills?
Questions about the authorship of this ancient Greek epic challenge the assumption that a major literary work must have one identifiable author.
What is the Odyssey?
This Indigenous theorist introduced the concept of survivance and critiqued stereotypical representations of Native peoples.
Who is Gerald Vizenor?
Simon Pokagon's birch bark writings demonstrate an intersection between oral traditions and this form of storytelling.
What is written literature or print culture?
Government suppression of ceremonies such as potlatch was part of this larger colonial effort to transform Indigenous cultures.
What is assimilation?
Deloria challenges the idea that religion must be defined through formal institutions, sacred scriptures, and buildings such as these.
What are churches?
This approach, associated with José Manuel Losada, examines how myths are transformed and interpreted in contemporary culture.
What is cultural mythcriticism?
This scholar examines colonial government efforts to suppress Indigenous religious and ceremonial practices.
Who is Ronald Niezen?
A Native community adapting ancestral stories for future generations while asserting its continued presence exemplifies this Vizenorian concept.
What is survivance?
Colonial authorities often treated Indigenous religious renewal movements as this, even when they expressed spiritual hope.
What are political or military threats?
In The Problem of Creation, Deloria questions the assumption that this cultural framework provides universal categories for understanding creation.
What is the Western religious framework (particularly Western Christian accounts of creation)?
Name the three cultural conditions that Losada identifies as influencing the contemporary reception and transformation of myth.
What are globalization, immanence, and relativism?
In God Is Red, this Indigenous scholar critiques the imposition of Western religious categories onto Indigenous worldviews.
Who is Vine Deloria Jr.?
When an outsider claims the authority to define an Indigenous community solely through stereotypes, this key relationship identified by Lincoln is at work. The four are:
What are narrative, ideology, authority, and power?
The film The Lakota Nation versus the United States presents the struggle over the Black Hills as a struggle for sacred land, identity, and this form of Indigenous political authority.
What is sovereignty?
While incorrect, what childhood game is often used to describe oral storytelling traditions?
What is the game of telephone?