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The writings of Joseph Epes Brown are considered amongst the most important studies on the North American Indian undertaken in the 20th Century. His works have been translated into numerous languages and are re-igniting interest in American Indian religious tradition. The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian: Commemorative Edition, not only presents his works on the fundamental and universal characteristics of the American Indian culture and tradition, but the previously unpublished correspondence sheds light on Dr. Brown’s time spent on the reservations immersed in the very cultures and peoples that he wrote about. Enhanced by previously unpublished photographs from Dr. Brown’s own private collection, The Spiritual of Legacy of the American Indian is a fascinating exposition of the often repeated Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin, “We are all Related.”
About the Author(s)
Joseph Epes Brown
The late Joseph Epes Brown was a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Montana. A renowned author in the fields of American Indian traditions and World Religions, Brown was one of the founders of Native American Studies and was largely responsible for bringing the study of these religious traditions into American higher education. His publications include The Sacred Pipe (1953), his famous recounting of the sacred rites of the Oglala Sioux.Dr. Brown's work appears in the following World Wisdom books:
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Michael Fitzgerald
Michael Fitzgerald is an author, editor, and publisher of books on world religions, sacred art, tradition, culture, and philosophy. He has written and edited many publications on American Indian spirituality, including Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief, and was adopted into Yellowtail's tribe and family. Fitzgerald has also taught university classes on religious traditions of North American Indians and lectured widely.
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Elenita and Marina Brown
Elenita and Marina (Weatherly) Brown are the wife and eldest daughter respectively of noted scholar of American Indian spirituality, Joseph Epes Brown Elentia is a renowned dancer, teacher and artist, and was married to Joseph Epes Brown for nearly 50 years. Marina is a professional artist and educator. She is also the author of several articles and is editing a forthcoming biography of the late Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, the first American Indian Nurse and wife of the Crow Sun Dance chief Thomas Yellowtail .They are the co-editors of The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian: Commemorative Editionwith Michael Fitzgerald
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Reviews
- Joseph Epes Brown’s The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian: Commemorative Edition With Letters While Living With Black Elk provides a newly revised, updated edition of a classic holding previously unpublished letters written while the author was living with Black Elk. Here the focus is upon his relationship to the Catholic Church and Lakota spirituality alike: a new introduction and editor’s preface and a biography of Brown compliments a complete bibliography of his works and a fine survey of Native spirituality’s encounter with Western standards.
Midwest Book Review, The Bookwatch June 2007
- Joseph Epes Brown [in The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian] explains what it means and takes to be an American Indian. Searching out ‘commonalities’ that form and elucidate Indian spiritual beliefs, Mr. Brown shows them in crucial need of revaluation by other Americans and demonstrates how much poorer the nation will be if it continues destroying the richness of tribal life and thought.
The New York Times
- Joseph Epes Brown, perhaps best known for The Sacred Pipe … spent a lifetime helping to situate the religious heritage of the American Indians within the context of the world’s religious traditions. The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian is the collection of his essays written over the period of twenty years, the record of his efforts to bring American Indian religions their due recognition and respect.
Professor Leonard J. Biallas, Quincy College
- This collection of essays is a fine sequel to Huston Smith’s The Religions of Man. Joseph Epes Brown offers a vivid portrait of American Indian Spirituality and argues that it should be studied alongside the great world religions … He has accomplished the difficult task of providing a strong introduction to one of the world’s great living religious traditions.
Amanda Porterfield, Syracuse University, in Journal of the American Academy of Religion
- Brown, a long-time student of Native American religion, has offer the public a brief, highly readable introduction to American Indian spirituality as claiming a place among the great religions of world. This short work deserves to be in the collection of any student interested in American Indian life.
Carl F. Starkloff, S.J, Regis College, Toronto School of Theology in Theological Studies
- America has not produced another scholar of the Native American traditions who combined in himself, as did Joseph Brown, profound spiritual and intellectual insight and traditional understanding, the deepest empathy for those traditions, nobility of character and generosity towards his students and everyone else who wanted to benefit from his unrivalled knowledge of the spiritual legacy of the first inhabitants of this continent.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The George Washington University
- Mr. Brown brought to his task genuine respect for the vanishing culture of the Sioux and for the values of their religious system.
Library Journal
- The late Joseph Brown was a legendary mentor, whose gentility and grace in person and on the page lent dignity and depth to the indigienous ways of knowledge and ceremony he passed onto others.
Peter Nabokov, UCLA
- This commemorative edition of a landmark work furnishes new material which dramatically illuminates hitherto unknown aspects of the lives of both the author and his most important informant, the Lakota sage Black Elk. A new Introduction, previously unpublished photographs, fresh biographical material and a series of remarkable letters all provide a richer context within which we can appreciate anew the beauty and profundity of this primordial spiritual tradition
Harry Oldmeadow, La Trobe University, author of Traditionalism: Religion in the light of the Perennial Philosophy
