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    "content": "\n### Book Review: The Urgency of Indigenous Values by Philip P. Arnold\n[Philip P. Arnold](https://artsandsciences.syracuse.edu/people/faculty/arnold-philip-p/)'s [*The Urgency of Indigenous Values*](https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/5835/urgency-of-indigenous-values-the/)[Open Access via JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/jj.6605389) is a clear and forceful book about land, relation, colonialism, and survival. Its central claim is simple but demanding: the category of \"religion\" often fails to describe Indigenous lifeways because it separates belief from land, body, community, ceremony, and responsibility. Arnold argues that \"Indigenous values\" is a better frame because it names a way of living in relation with the natural world, ancestors, nonhuman beings, and future generations.\n\nThe book is grounded mainly in Haudenosaunee traditions and in Arnold's long relationship with Haudenosaunee communities in central New York, especially the Onondaga Nation. This is one of its strengths. Arnold writes from a decades-long relationship he and his wife, Sandy Bigtree (Akwesasne Mohawk), have had with the Haudenosaunee. Trained in the History of Religions, He writes from place, relationship, and obligation. The result is not a detached survey of Indigenous religions. It is an argument about why the words scholars use matter, and why those words have real consequences for land, people, and public life.\n\nArnold's most important move is his critique of \"religion\" as a settler-colonial category. In much Western thought, religion is treated as belief, doctrine, private meaning, or institutional affiliation. Arnold shows why that model does not fit many Indigenous traditions. It also distorts them. Indigenous life, in his account, cannot be divided into religion over here, politics over there, and ecology somewhere else. Land is not a background setting. It is a living relation. Ceremony is not an isolated ritual act. It is part of a larger order of responsibility. Values are not abstract ideals. They are practiced through attention, exchange, gratitude, and restraint.\n\nThis shift from religion to values gives the book its power. To call something \"religion\" can make it seem optional, private, or symbolic. To speak of \"values\" makes the issue broader and more material. It asks how people live, what they honor, what they consume, what they damage, and what they owe. That is why the book connects Indigenous studies, religious studies, and environmental humanities so well.\n\nThe middle chapters are especially compelling; here Arnold develops several key ideas: paying attention, *habitus*, and exchange. \"Paying attention\" is situated ontology or a way of living responsibly in a world full of relations. *Habitus* challenges the idea that land is property or space to be occupied. It points instead to dwelling with land in a sustained and reciprocal way. \"Exchange\" contrasts Indigenous practices of reciprocity with capitalist habits of extraction and commodification. These concepts give readers a practical vocabulary. They also make the book teachable. Students can see how Arnold's argument moves from theory into daily life.\n\nThe book becomes most urgent when Arnold links Indigenous values to ecological crisis. Listening to and learning from Onondaga Nation Turtle Clan Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, Arnold calls for religious studies as a field/discipline to pay attention to the climate emergency, which is not only a scientific problem. It is also a moral and spiritual crisis rooted in destructive values like dominion theology and the [doctrine of discovery](https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/). Modern settler-colonial society has treated land as property, water as a resource, and nonhuman life as material for human use. Arnold connects this worldview to Christian colonialism and to the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. In his reading, ecological destruction and Indigenous dispossession are not separate histories. They belong to the same structure of domination.\n\nArnold's critique of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is sharp and succinct. Readers may find themselves wanting more detail, and they should. If they wish to learn more, they can listen to [*Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery*](https://podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org/), the podcast that Arnold and Bigtree co-host. *Urgency of Indigenous Values* builds on the critique of Christian Hegemony that Arnold and Bigtree published for the Doctrine of Discovery Project ([Ten Religious Themes of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) that Contrast with Indigenous Values](https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/10-religous-dimensions/)). Expounding upon the '10 Themes' essay, Arnold highlights how Christian ideas and institutions helped justify conquest, missionization, land theft, and cultural destruction. Still, the book sometimes moves quickly across a large historical field. Readers looking for a more detailed account of internal Christian differences, legal history, or anti-colonial Christian traditions may find the treatment compressed. How do you fit 500 years of colonization into 200 pages? This is where the book as an Open Educational Resource becomes so exciting and important. The monograph serves as a large and shady branch on the tree of Digital humanities projects that Arnold and Bigtree are involved in, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned Doctrine of Discovery Project site and podcast. *Urgency of Indigenous Values* is best read with a pencil in one hand and an iPad in the other.\n\nThat said, the book is strongest when read as a framework rather than a complete map. Arnold gives readers a way to rethink inherited categories. He shows that scholarly language is never neutral. It can repeat colonial habits or help unsettle them. His account of collaboration is central here. He rejects the image of the scholar as an outside expert who studies Indigenous peoples as objects. Instead, he argues for scholarship shaped by relationship, accountability, and shared concern. This is not only an ethical preference. It is part of the book's method. If knowledge is relational, then scholarship must also be relational.\n\n*The Urgency of Indigenous Values* is a serious and needed book. Its main contribution is not that it discovers a new topic, but that it reframes an urgent one. Arnold asks readers to see that the ecological crisis is also a crisis of relation. The problem is not only what modern societies do to the land. The problem is what modern societies believe land is.\n\nThe book is best read as an intervention. It challenges the academic study of religion, settler colonial law, Christian supremacy, environmental destruction, and the habits of extraction that shape modern life. Its strongest chapters show how Indigenous values offer more than critique. They offer practices of attention, habitation, reciprocity, and responsibility.\n\nArnold's central lesson builds on the work of Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, as [the ice melts in the north](https://www.peacecouncil.net/NOON/articles/pnl732icemelting.html), humanity's survival depends on a value change. And the values that produced the crisis will not solve it.\n",
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  "textContent": "Book Review: The Urgency of Indigenous Values by Philip P. Arnold\nPhilip P. Arnold's The Urgency of Indigenous ValuesOpen Access via JSTOR is a clear and forceful book about land, relation, colonialism, and survival. Its central claim is simple but demanding: the category of \"religion\" often fails to describe Indigenous lifeways because it separates belief from land, body, community, ceremony, and responsibility. Arnold argues that \"Indigenous values\" is a better frame because it names a way of living in relation with the natural world, ancestors, nonhuman beings, and future generations.\n\nThe book is grounded mainly in Haudenosaunee traditions and in Arnold's long relationship with Haudenosaunee communities in central New York, especially the Onondaga Nation. This is one of its strengths. Arnold writes from a decades-long relationship he and his wife, Sandy Bigtree (Akwesasne Mohawk), have had with the Haudenosaunee. Trained in the History of Religions, He writes from place, relationship, and obligation. The result is not a detached survey of Indigenous religions. It is an argument about why the words scholars use matter, and why those words have real consequences for land, people, and public life.\n\nArnold's most important move is his critique of \"religion\" as a settler-colonial category. In much Western thought, religion is treated as belief, doctrine, private meaning, or institutional affiliation. Arnold shows why that model does not fit many Indigenous traditions. It also distorts them. Indigenous life, in his account, cannot be divided into religion over here, politics over there, and ecology somewhere else. Land is not a background setting. It is a living relation. Ceremony is not an isolated ritual act. It is part of a larger order of responsibility. Values are not abstract ideals. They are practiced through attention, exchange, gratitude, and restraint.\n\nThis shift from religion to values gives the book its power. To call something \"religion\" can make it seem optional, private, or symbolic. To speak of \"values\" makes the issue broader and more material. It asks how people live, what they honor, what they consume, what they damage, and what they owe. That is why the book connects Indigenous studies, religious studies, and environmental humanities so well.\n\nThe middle chapters are especially compelling; here Arnold develops several key ideas: paying attention, habitus, and exchange. \"Paying attention\" is situated ontology or a way of living responsibly in a world full of relations. Habitus challenges the idea that land is property or space to be occupied. It points instead to dwelling with land in a sustained and reciprocal way. \"Exchange\" contrasts Indigenous practices of reciprocity with capitalist habits of extraction and commodification. These concepts give readers a practical vocabulary. They also make the book teachable. Students can see how Arnold's argument moves from theory into daily life.\n\nThe book becomes most urgent when Arnold links Indigenous values to ecological crisis. Listening to and learning from Onondaga Nation Turtle Clan Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, Arnold calls for religious studies as a field/discipline to pay attention to the climate emergency, which is not only a scientific problem. It is also a moral and spiritual crisis rooted in destructive values like dominion theology and the doctrine of discovery. Modern settler-colonial society has treated land as property, water as a resource, and nonhuman life as material for human use. Arnold connects this worldview to Christian colonialism and to the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. In his reading, ecological destruction and Indigenous dispossession are not separate histories. They belong to the same structure of domination.\n\nArnold's critique of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is sharp and succinct. Readers may find themselves wanting more detail, and they should. If they wish to learn more, they can listen to Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery, the podcast that Arnold and Bigtree co-host. Urgency of Indigenous Values builds on the critique of Christian Hegemony that Arnold and Bigtree published for the Doctrine of Discovery Project (Ten Religious Themes of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) that Contrast with Indigenous Values). Expounding upon the '10 Themes' essay, Arnold highlights how Christian ideas and institutions helped justify conquest, missionization, land theft, and cultural destruction. Still, the book sometimes moves quickly across a large historical field. Readers looking for a more detailed account of internal Christian differences, legal history, or anti-colonial Christian traditions may find the treatment compressed. How do you fit 500 years of colonization into 200 pages? This is where the book as an Open Educational Resource becomes so exciting and important. The monograph serves as a large and shady branch on the tree of Digital humanities projects that Arnold and Bigtree are involved in, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned Doctrine of Discovery Project site and podcast. Urgency of Indigenous Values is best read with a pencil in one hand and an iPad in the other.\n\nThat said, the book is strongest when read as a framework rather than a complete map. Arnold gives readers a way to rethink inherited categories. He shows that scholarly language is never neutral. It can repeat colonial habits or help unsettle them. His account of collaboration is central here. He rejects the image of the scholar as an outside expert who studies Indigenous peoples as objects. Instead, he argues for scholarship shaped by relationship, accountability, and shared concern. This is not only an ethical preference. It is part of the book's method. If knowledge is relational, then scholarship must also be relational.\n\nThe Urgency of Indigenous Values is a serious and needed book. Its main contribution is not that it discovers a new topic, but that it reframes an urgent one. Arnold asks readers to see that the ecological crisis is also a crisis of relation. The problem is not only what modern societies do to the land. The problem is what modern societies believe land is.\n\nThe book is best read as an intervention. It challenges the academic study of religion, settler colonial law, Christian supremacy, environmental destruction, and the habits of extraction that shape modern life. Its strongest chapters show how Indigenous values offer more than critique. They offer practices of attention, habitation, reciprocity, and responsibility.\n\nArnold's central lesson builds on the work of Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, as the ice melts in the north, humanity's survival depends on a value change. And the values that produced the crisis will not solve it.",
  "title": "Book Review: The Urgency of Indigenous Values by Philip P. Arnold",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-29T16:05:50.905Z"
}