Native American Catholic Studies Reader: History and Theology ed. by David J. Endres (review)

Reviewed by: Native American Catholic Studies Reader: History and Theology ed. by David J. Endres Suzanne Crawford O'Brien Native American Catholic Studies Reader: History and Theology. Edited by David J. Endres. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022. 280pp. 29. 95. Endres's collection of essays explores the intersection of Catholicism and Native America and is divided into three sections: education and evangelization; tradition and transition; and Native American lives. All share a common theme: that Catholicism was not imposed upon Native people but was an organic expression of emerging Indigenous identity. The authors are non-Native and write with friendly eye toward Catholicism and its mission among Indigenous people. End Page 74 Part One begins with an essay by Christopher Vecsey considering five hundred years of "evangeliteracy, " his term to describe the key role of writing within mission work. As he notes, texts were used by missionaries both to evangelize and to ensure the subjugation of Native people. Despite this, Native people were quick to adopt literacy for their own spiritual and political work. Mark Thiel provides a thoughtful examination of catechetical ladders. As Thiel notes, missionaries were pragmatists, inventing these instructional aids to meet the needs of the communities they sought to reach. In the final chapter of this section, Gerald McKevitt asserts that priests served as cultural brokers and negotiators between tribes and Euroamerican society, acknowledging the complexity and sometimes contradictory nature of priests' relationships with them. Part Two begins with Ross Enochs's essay, which argues that economic and social changes of the nineteenth century issued a death-blow to Indigenous traditions. He offers a defense of Catholic missionaries, insisting they were not to blame for the decline in Indigenous religions and presents a positive picture of Catholic residential schools, describing them as able caretakers of Native children, who served at the request of the communities themselves. In the next chapter, Carl Starkloff, SJ, examines the place of inculturation in twentieth-century Native Catholic history, and does so in light of his own vocational experiences. He identifies three periods: confrontation and dialogue (1965–1979), participant observation (1979–1989), and backlash to inculturation (1989–1997). Finally, Mark Clatterbuck considers the continuing influence of the Catholic charismatic movement in Montana from 1975–1985, which he ably describes as a widespread, ecumenical movement that met Native peoples' needs for physical and spiritual healing and renewal. Part Three begins with Allan Greer's consideration of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, arguing that her canonization was shaped by a desire to affirm the church's American identity. St. Kateri provided a means of identification with the North American continent, anchoring a foreign faith in the soil of this continent. In his essay Conor J. Donnan considers affiliations between Irish Catholics and Native American communities. While acknowledging the complicity of some Irish Americans in genocidal violence, Donnan explores the many social, political, and economic commonalities shared between Native Americans and Irish Catholics, and affiliations formed around mutual opposition to Anglo-Protestantism and common values. In the final essay, Damien Costello gives consideration to the well-documented life of Lakota medicine man and catechist Black Elk, arguing that he exemplified a genuine spiritual symbiosis between his Catholic and Indigenous traditions. On the whole, this is a worthy collection that helps shed light on the experience of Indigenous Catholicism, albeit from a primarily End Page 75 Euroamerican perspective. Tensions between Native people and Catholicism are downplayed throughout this volume, which instead emphasizes the creativity of missionaries and moments of solidarity between Catholicism and Indigeneity. While important, the absence of contributions that explore the very real tensions that did exist-including complicity in enslavement, genocide, and the systemic abuse of children-is noteworthy. Given increased awareness of the devastating multi-generational impacts of residential schools on Indigenous people, it is jarring to find little to no mention of that devastation. Many contributions to this collection show a nuanced and thoughtful under. . /acs₉23456/acs₉23456₀1i. gifstanding of Indigenous cultures and communities, and acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous traditions have survived, adapting and evolving to meet changing contexts. However, other assertions that Indigenous traditions had perished in the face of colonialism fail to consider the ways living. . .