Sightings Articles

Reckoning with Re-education: Christianity’s Role in Native American Boarding Schools
American Christians must reckon with colonial history and cooperate with US government's “Road to Healing" initiative....
July 6, 2022

Loss and Continuation: Lessons from the Popol Vuh
An ancient Maya tradition on keeping those we've lost alive...
June 10, 2021

DNA Tests, Indigenous Identity, and "Playing Indian"
In October 2018, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, publicly released the results of a DNA test taken to prove Native American ancestry in her family lineage, a move prompted by numerous attacks from President Trum...
January 10, 2019

A Season of Myths
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung) This past week people in the USA entered the “season of myths” that runs from Thanksgiving through various religious holi...
November 26, 2018

Sacred Sites Violated
What if the Sioux Nation decided to build a pipeline through Arlington Cemetery? This question from Faith Spotted Eagle—who lacks a Ph.D. in comparative religion and who would never be employed to teach the phenomenology of burial ritual—got at the h...
February 13, 2017

Sioux Suicides
Sightings of religion-related stories among members of Sioux tribes in South Dakota, one would think, could be beyond the scope of the national media, yet two independent stories win space this week on the front pages of, e.g., The New York Times. ...