Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions

As a former student of the Joseph Epes Brown, I think Joseph expresses himself more clearly in this book than he was ever able to do in the classroom. It is the best summary of Native American religious traditions I have ever read. Delightful and surprising. I only wish he was still with us.

I found this book a fascinating, especially for a required college textbook. In his introductary chapter, he is redundant and tries to give the air the Native American religions are much more full of meaning than Western European religions. I was glad to see the rest of the book didn't make such ethnocentric and blanketed statements. The rest of the book is a quick overview of Native American religion. It explains in a very easy manner about the way they live and the differences in their cultures, and provides various examples and humorous stories to demonstrate Brown's findings.In closing, I think this book is a must have for any anthropologist.