Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

When she invites us to "recover the sacred," well-known Native American organizer Winona LaDuke is requesting far more than the rescue of ancient bones and beaded headbands from museums. For LaDuke, only the power to define what is sacred-and access it-will enable Native American communities to remember who they are and fashion their future.

Using a wealth of Native American research and hundreds of interviews with indigenous scholars and activists, LaDuke examines the connections between sacred objects and the sacred bodies of her people-past, present and future-focusing more closely on the conditions under which traditional beliefs can best be practiced. Describing the plentiful gaps between mainstream and indigenous thinking, she probes the paradoxes that abound for the native people of the Americas. How, for instance, can the indigenous imperative to honor the Great Salt Mother be carried out when mining threatens not only access to Nevada's Great Salt Lake but the health of the lake water itself? While Congress has belatedly moved to protect most Native American religious expression, it has failed to protect the places and natural resources integral to the ceremonies.

Federal laws have achieved neither repatriation of Native remains nor protection of sacred sites, and may have even less power to confront the more insidious aspects of cultural theft, such as the parading of costumed mascots. But what of political marginalization? How can the government fund gene mapping while governmental neglect causes extreme poverty, thus blocking access to basic healthcare for most tribal members? Calling as ever on her lyrical sensibility and caustic wit, moving from the popular to the politic, from the sacred to the profane, LaDuke uses these essays not just to indict the current situation, but to point out a way forward for Native Americans and their allies.

Average Customer Rating:

Heart and Respect	Customer Rating:
Heart-wrenching and heart-warming. Winona LaDuke's straightforward descriptions of how the indigenous plant, animal, and human peoples of North America were decimated will take your breath away and her inspiring accounts of the steps that are being taken to rebuild and restore will have you breathing a sigh of relief.

A discussion of the struggles Native Americans have made particularly in modern history

Customer Rating:

Two-time Green Party Vice Presidential candidate Winona LaDuke presents Recovering The Sacred: The Power Of Naming And Claiming, a discussion of the struggles Native Americans have made particularly in modern history to reclaim their rights and cave a path that balances personal, ecological, and cultural integrity. From "Vampire" biopiracy incidents such as taking samples of Native Blood under the pretext that it will be used to research diabetes and selling it to bidders who actually use it as evidence for the Bering Strait land bridge theory - in direct conflict with the religious beliefs of those who provided the donation - to corrupting public regard of Native tribes through using their names at sporting events (it would be unthinkable to wave crucifixes or the Torah at heated game, yet spiritual Native American objects such as the feather headdress are freely worn), to modern land grabs for any coal, oil, or valuable materials remaining on any Native reservation and more, Recovering The Sacred sheds a spotlight on the disdainful to hostile manner in which America regards its Native peoples. A carefully researched and persuasively presented accounting of the inequities of the past, what Native peoples are courageously doing now to protect their rights and their culture, and what challenges the future may bring. Highly recommended.

Recovering the Sacred from Materialist Reductionism

Customer Rating:

Leading activist/scholar writing from among the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) of northern Minnesota, Winona LaDuke brings to all of us the ecological wisdom of Native Americans. The sacred has to be "recovered" by "naming and claiming" a people's land, its holy sites, and its "relatives" among other creatures (such as sturgeon, horse, and manoomin or wild rice). In a splendid blend of wit, good humor, necessary polemic, personal experience (not only as Founding Director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, but also as world traveler), and copious research, this book lays down its assertive challenge to a dehumanizing materialism that has relegated "the sacred" to an allegedly peripheral irrelevancy. LaDuke's book describes here how the Native American community has begun to "heal itself from the ravages of the past." Vigorous pro-active efforts emerge in her stories about naming and claiming what is sacred to that community.