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By the time this book tour is finished, she will have succeeded in splitting the republican party, solidifying a new hard right religious base, and making enough money to turn Alaska into the New Jerusalem.

Forty years ago, Indian militants, as they were then named, occupied the island of Alcatraz. In their memory, our writer reflects on both the bloody history of the first Thanksgiving, and the remarkable, enduring power of tribal tradition to create spiritual sustenance in the modern world.

Maybe it’s time to stop framing European conquest as dinner party between Pilgrims and Indians.

A new book.

Hell to the Naw!

In the Bible, God has a preference for the poor and outcast, but this message is lost on many contemporary readers. A new edition seeks to remedy this ignorance, even as it turns a tidy profit for the publisher.

A century and a half after the publication of Darwin’s foundational work, attacks on his ideas continue—including evangelicals distributing a newly altered version. But it will take more than banana-wielding fundamentalism to undermine the validity of evolutionary theory.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, visionary anthropologist, once said: “The world began without man and will end without him.” Was he post-humanist? Post-monotheist? Such binaries can’t capture a thinker of his subtlety.

Only two governments have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Somalia and the US. President Obama supports ratification, as does Hillary Clinton. On the opposing side? Christian Right Home Schoolers and believers in “American Exceptionalism.” Ironies abound.

The latest generation of religion scholars has studied Lévi-Strauss only to distance itself from his theories, and to challenge the myth of structuralism. Perhaps in doing so we have created a fable of our own.