In Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, 115. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

George Tinker (Osage/Cherokee) builds on Deloria's critique of the Western intellectual tradition and offers one of the most developed analyses of liberation theology by a native Christian.  He first presented this essay in Nairobi, Kenya, as one of the keynote addresses at the 1992 General Assembly of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, of which Tinker is a member.  He begins by pointing out that the oppression of "fourth-world peoples" involves a spiritual dimension, what might also be called cultural genocide.  He examines four important themes of liberation theology that have emerged from the conventional social and historical analysis typified in the work of Gustavo Gutierrez.  Emphasizing the centrality of cultural factors in collective identity and political praxis, Tinker imagines an alternative paradigm for justice and peace that is rooted in indigenous relationships to creation and the creator.

© 2008 by James Treat