In Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, 93. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

Robert Warrior (Osage) is assistant professor of English at Stanford University.  He is the author of Tribal Secrets: The Recovery of American Indian Intellectual Traditions (University of Minnesota, 1994) and numerous articles, interviews, essays and reviews.  He has also worked as a freelance journalist and as a consultant on several educational projects.  This influential essay was originally published in the religious journal Christianity and Crisis.  Warrior points out that the biblical paradigm of liberation used by most liberation theologies is based on an uncritical reading of the Exodus narrative, an interpretation that overlooks the experience of the indigenous Canaanites, and he argues that native people may need to look elsewhere for a compelling and meaningful vision of liberation.  Warrior's essay has circulated widely and has provoked a variety of responses, including William Baldridge's letter to the editor.  Baldridge answers Warrior's challenge by suggesting another perspective on the historical and religious significance of the Canaanites.  Jace Weaver (Cherokee) also responded to Warrior's essay, in a short piece published several years later in Christianity and Crisis, in which he outlines an alternative biblical paradigm for the liberation of indigenous peoples.  Weaver is a doctoral candidate at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and an accomplished author, and he is active in the Native American International Caucus of the United Methodist Church.

© 2008 by James Treat