Religious Pluralism and Me.

Paul B. Steinmetz, S.J., Pipe, Bible, and Peyote among the Oglala Lakota: A Study in Religious Identity. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998. 237pp., 22 photos, 1 map, 2 diagrams. $19.95 (paper).

This work might more aptly be titled: "Pipe, Bible, Peyote, and Steinmetz among the Oglala Lakota." It not only elucidates the dynamic nature of Oglala religion but also documents a twenty-year involvement with the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation by Jesuit missionary and historian of religion Paul Steinmetz. These two themes are intertwined in an insightful and illuminating work which might well be characterized as "Christian postmodernism," given the shifting perspectives provided by both the author and the subjects of his work.

Steinmetz suggests a dynamic model for religious participation among the Lakota based on a variety of key Lakota categories. He examines three symbols: one traditional (the pipe); one introduced by Indian peoples to the reservation (Peyote); and one introduced by Europeans (the Bible). In addition, he considers two Native self-classifications, which represent more behavioral than genetic categories: mixed-blood (tending to accommodate to the outside) and full-blood (tending to conserve identities and values of the past). Finally, Steinmetz describes and analyses five groups (or, more properly, since individuals move among groups, five "Ideal Types"): AIM (the American Indian Movement -- a militant group active on Pine Ridge for many years); Ecumenists I (a name invented by Steinmetz for people who compartmentalize their Christian and Traditional beliefs and practices); Ecumenists II (who hold that Christianity fulfills traditional Lakota religion); Cross Fire Native American Church (explicitly Christian in i ts forms of worship); Half Moon Native American Church (not explicitly Christian); and The Body of Christ (a fundamentalist group).

The majority of this work provides a contemporary ethnography of traditional religion, the Native American Church (which employs peyote as the central ceremonial symbol), and the Body of Christ. Steinmetz includes their historical origins, ritual and symbolic life, and a careful record of speeches given at communal worship -- an important part of Lakota ritual often omitted in ethnographies in favor of stage directions for rituals. The author's strongest ethnography is among the Native American Church, while the Body of Christ group is least well described. In the midst of this ethnography, the author interweaves his own acts of participant observation as scholar, theologian, devoted friend, relative by affection, Catholic ritual leader, and one who prays with a pipe.

If one reads this work as a self-ethnography, it provides fascinating insights by a priest who was one of the first to break from the old missiological model of religious and cultural replacement. As an objective ethnography, however, the text raises a variety of problems. While Steinmetz does an exemplary job of separating his speeches from those of his Lakota teachers throughout the ethnography, he is not always clear as to which beliefs and symbolic conceptualizations are his own, which belong to others, and which are transferred from himself to others. This is where the role of outside observer and inside participant becomes blurry.

Let me provide one example of this hermeneutical conundrum. Steinmetz states: "During the Sun Dances I observed and participated in, there was a harmony between the two religious traditions" (30). Later, he admits that there was conflict over his presence at a sun dance voiced by militant Indians, contradicting his empirical statement.

While Steinmetz himself is clearly an unabashed cultural innovator, evidenced by his adoption of the pipe into Catholic funeral rituals, he has less patience for other "innovators," such as militants who contend that only Lakota should manipulate Lakota symbols -- ironically a stance which has garnered much sympathy from contemporary missiologists. Yet in a charismatic religious structure which has a wide (but not total) tolerance for innovation and revival, one is hard pressed to see conflict as simply the result of not knowing the tradition, especially when the history of this conflict can be traced to early missionary contact.

Ultimately Steinmetz is comfortable blurring the lines among his multiple roles in the academy as a scholar and on the reservation as a priest. He himself states: ".... at times my personal beliefs are a part of the history of Lakota religion." Read as an ethnography about the Steinmetz's involvement with the Lakota, one has a rich text indeed. However, read as a religious ethnography, objectivity and the necessity of separating the beliefs of the observer from the observed become problematic. Thus, in his funeral homily for Ben Black Elk (200-204), the author conflates the "Black Elk tradition" with his own catechesis about Christ and the pipe. So too, the author states that "the Lakota Catholics decorated their church under my supervision," yet fails to document and separate their motivations and interpretations from his own (36).

Steinmetz not only provides an important (and unique) contemporary portrait of Lakota religious pluralism, his work also raises several important issues, often in response to his critics and critics of the mission endeavor in general. He establishes his own suitability for ethnographic work as a priest, stating that his background provides the observer with sympathetic insight into other ritual/sacramental systems. He also takes on the very thorny issue of conversion, demonstrating that there are Lakota who in fact are sincere and faith-filled Christians. He himself admits that measuring "depth" is not possible, but he contends that simply reducing religious conversion to social, economic, or political necessity (with or without compulsion) does not fully address the reality of Christianity on the reservation. At times, however, the author pushes the debate to the opposite extreme of completely secular interpretations.

The book includes a map, bibliography, diagrams and photographs to help visually orient the reader. One would wish, after a nineteen-year publication history (first as a dissertation in 1980 and then revised in 1990), that the press would have added a historical introduction so that the reader might understand the debates involved in the book. I recommend this book both for the rich detail and compelling model of Lakota religious pluralism it provides, as well as for the questions and debates it raises and will continue to raise.