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Welcome to Indigenous Religious Traditions
Welcome to Indigenous Religious Traditions.
There are about 476 million Indigenous people in the world, living in some ninety countries and belonging to more than five thousand distinct cultures. Their spiritual traditions are among the oldest on earth, and they are not relics of the past: they are living, changing, and in many places growing stronger after centuries of suppression.
This course is taught, as far as possible, through Indigenous voices: the Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr., the Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Yoruba scholar Jacob Olupona, and many others. It covers only what Indigenous communities have chosen to share publicly. Some ceremonies, songs, and stories are sacred and restricted, and part of learning about Indigenous traditions is learning to respect what is not ours to know.
How This Course Works
| Topic | Details |
|---|---|
| Prerequisite | None. Titles and degrees begin with ordination through the Ordination Orientation. |
| Pace | Self-paced. Most students finish in four to six weeks, studying about four to five hours a week. There are no deadlines. |
| Structure | Eight modules. Each module has a lesson, a reading assignment, and a ten-question quiz. |
| Book report | Read one of the books offered, pass its ten-question quiz, and write a one-paragraph summary, after Module 8. |
| Final exam | Fifteen multiple-choice questions and one essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words, taken after Module 8. |
| Credit | 3 credit hours toward further titles and degrees. |
Grading
| Part | To pass |
|---|---|
| Module quizzes (8) | Pass each with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Book report quiz (10 questions) | Pass with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Book report summary (one paragraph) | Approved by the school |
| Final exam, Part 1 (multiple choice) | Pass with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Final exam, Part 2 (one essay, 1,500 to 2,000 words) | Approved by the school |
Required texts
- God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Vine Deloria Jr.
- Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
- African Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Jacob K. Olupona
Many of these books are available from public libraries, used bookstores, and as ebooks.
What you will study
Module 1: Learning with Respect Module 2: Land, Kinship, and the Sacred Module 3: Story and Oral Tradition Module 4: Ceremony and Healing Module 5: African Traditional Religions Module 6: Australia, the Pacific, and the Arctic Module 7: Colonization, Survival, and Revival Module 8: Respect, Appropriation, and Ministry
Book report choices
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer; God Is Red, Vine Deloria Jr.
Academic honesty
All written work must be your own. You may quote and discuss the course readings and other sources, but you must say where the words and ideas came from. Submitting work written by someone else, including work generated entirely by AI tools, is not permitted.