Theology and "the right of discovery" (and other mysteries of the Big White Chief.)

George Tinker begins his book Spirit and Resistence: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation with this observation:

"In 1803, the United States purchased the entirety of Osage land - from France. Osages yet today are trying figure that one out. It had to do with something called the Louisiana Purchase and something to do with with some obscure european legal doctrine called the "right to discovery." What it ever had to do with the Osage people, who were never privy to his doctine or included in the negotiation leading to the purchase, is still a mystery."

Theologians deal with mysteries, and to the indigenous people of this land, the presenting mystery by which they judge Christianity is their conquest and the lies and deceptions that the conquering people have told themselves about that conquest. For Native peoples being conquered by people with no respect for the truth and no respect for history is the stuff of theological reflection. Tinker is emerging as the theologian of liberation for indigenous peoples, "he probes American Indian culture, its vast religious and cultural legacy, and its ambiguous relationship to the tradition-historic Christianity-that colonized and converted it".

In a previous work, Missionary Conquest Tinker explored the history of Christianity relative to the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America.) Conversion was conceived as a way of turning native peoples into clones of Europeans culturally, spiritually, and economically. Now the books publishers ask "after five hundred years of conquest and social destruction, he says, any useful reflection must come to terms with the political state of Indian affairs and the political hopes and visions for recovering the health and well-being of Indian communities." Can dominant culture Christian theology provide any answers to the problems that the missionary conquest have wrought?

Not without a complete overhaul, and Tinker precedes to deconstruct some of the sacred cows of dominant culture Christian theology. Tinker is critical of recent liberal and New Age co-opting of Native spiritual practices, Tinker also offers a critical corrective to [South American] liberation theology. He shows how Native insights into the Sacred Other and sacred space helpfully reconfigure traditional ideas of God, Jesus' notion of the reign of God, and our relation to the earth. From this basis he offers novel proposals about cultural survival and identity, sustainability, and the endangered health of Native Americans."۬
Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Liberal Liberation by۬George E. "Tink" Tinker is Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado. He is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. Among his many publications are Missionary Conquest (Fortress Press, 1993) and Native American Theology (co-authored, 2001).