Indigenous Religious Traditions and the Limits of White Supremacy

Abstract

Although stereotypes and misunderstandings of Native American worldviews abound, historians can look to the pan-Indian movement known as the Ghost Dance for a clear example of the role religious devotion played in many of these communities post-1870. I introduce the concept of fugitive religion here as a new lens for understanding how displaced Indigenous groups in what is today the United States fought for their existence in an era characterized by acute racial violence. I argue that fugitive religion created zones of protection for self and community that allowed Native nations to persist beyond the racial terror that defined the American West in the last half of the nineteenth century. This article is part of a special issue of Pacific Historical Review, “Religion in the Nineteenth-Century American West.”