Deloria’s Invocation: The Fourth Kind of Sacred Lands

The earth is sacred, but we do make distinctions regarding the kinds of activities in which we (humans) engage based on the character of the sacredness expressed in places. Deloria presented four categories of sacred lands. The third category focused on special sacred places found through revelation. This article examines the seldom-discussed fourth category of sacred lands that is central to Deloria’s entire corpus of work regarding American Indian “religious” traditions and metaphysics. These are the places, not yet revealed, which we must be ready to receive. For, as Deloria repeatedly emphasized, god—that is, the sacred powers of creation—is not dead in our world or the traditions where that power(s) is honored. In this article I suggest, for those of us who have not done so, we must seriously ask if we are prepared to receive new revelations in new places in this technology-defined age of the Anthropocene.