Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions.

Robert Allen Warrior has written occasionally for The Progressive on issues of interest to Native Americans. His book, Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions, has just been published by the University of Minnesota Press. It deals primarily with the thinking of Vine Deloria Jr. and John Joseph Mathews, whom he describes as "two American Indian intellectuals of this century." Naturally enough, though, you should expect to read of spiritual traditions here, too.

I received the galleys of the book just a couple of weeks ago, and they drew me back to that Friday, November 4. After our day was done, John Egerton and I went to the last hour or so of a conversation about the case of Indian activist (and prisoner) Leonard Peltier, between writer Peter Matthiessen and a group of students and activists at the University of Wisconsin's student union. There was talk of politics and strategy, of course, but also of spirituality.

As we were leaving, an Indian man with a flowing white beard and flowing white braids came up to me. "Bear hug" is the only way to describe his purpose. Then he said, "Listen: In the Indian way, and in the Zen way, death is just another form of life. Erwin is not dead. he's just looking for a new body."