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My research areas include Native American and Indigenous religions and American religious history. Much of my work focuses on the history of the study and representation of Native American religions. Thematically, my work contributes to discussions about method and theory in the study of religion; religion, race, and empire; material religion; religion in museums; religious appropriation; and religion, health, and wellbeing.

book manuscript

I am currently at work on a book manuscript tentatively titled The Materialization of Native American Religions: The Smithsonian, Settler Colonialism, and the Study of Indigenous Lifeways. It will be published as part of the Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology Series from the University of Nebraska Press.

This project examines the legacy of government-funded research on Native American religions conducted by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), a Smithsonian agency. I focus on the Bureau’s origins, methods, and the theories about Indigenous religions they promoted, with case studies on Zuni landscapes, Cherokee language, and Lakota ceremonial practices. The Bureau’s research on Native American beliefs and practices was conducted during the “assimilation era” of U.S. Indian policy, a devastating period in which many Native traditions were targeted by the federal government. Bureau contributions increased knowledge of Native American traditions among policymakers, scholars, and the general public–but often at a great cost to the Indigenous communities they studied.

scholarly articles & chapters

“The Appropriation of Native North American Religious Traditions” in Native American Religions: Teaching and Learning on Stolen Land, ed. Dana Lloyd (Routledge, 2026)

“North America” (Theories and methods in the study of Native North American religious traditions) in The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Indigenous Religions, ed. Jacob Olupona and Graham Harvey (Routledge, 2025)

“Remaking Spaces for Indigenous Art,” Venue: A Digital Journal of the Midwest Art History Society 2.1 (introduction to a special issue on Indigenous art), September 2024

“Religion, Race, and the Limit of Ethics: Historical Considerations.” (Open Access – free to read online, download, share) | Journal of Religious Ethics 52.3 (September 2024): 387-409

“Rituals of Erasure and Transcendence: Exhibiting Indigenous Objects in Art Museums.” | Museums as Ritual Sites: Civilizing Rituals Reconsidered, ed. Lieke Wijnia and James Bielo (Routledge, 2024) <pdf of pre-print version>

“Spiritual Healing for Sale: Medical Pluralism and the Commodification of Native American Healing Traditions.” In Selling the Sacred: Religion and Marketing in the Digital Age, edited by Mara Einstein and Sarah McFarland Taylor (Routledge, 2024)

“A Bitter Poetics of Differentiation: Cultural Evolution in the Verse of John Wesley Powell.” | Political Theology 24.7 (2023): 666-86. Part of a Special Issue on Settler Colonialism and Political Theology, edited by Dana Lloyd and Jan Pranger. <pdf of pre-print version / read the editors’ introduction to the collection here>

“Before Before and Beyond the New Age: Historical Appropriation of Native American Medicine and Spirituality / Antes Y Más Allá De La Nueva Era: Apropiación Histórica De La Medicina Y La Espiritualidad De Los Nativos Americanos.” (Open Access – free to read online, download, share) | American Religion 4.2 (Spring 2023), 17-44. <Companion piece with visuals and sources: “Buying and Selling Narratives of Health”>

“Religion on the Brink: Settler-Colonial Knowledge Production in the US Census” | Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022): 85-102. <pdf of pre-print, uncorrected proofs>

“New Religions and Old Ways: Kiowa Religious Change and Continuity in a Time of Upheaval” | Nova Religio 25.4 (2022): 102-109 <pdf>

“How do ideas about race shape understandings of Native American Religious Life?” (40-42) & “What is the origin of common stereotypes about Native American religions?” (43-45) in Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes, ed. Natalie Avalos and Molly Harbour Bassett (Equinox, 2022)

“Religion and U.S. Federal Indian Policy” | A Companion to American Religious History, ed. Benjamin Park (Wiley, 2021) <pdf>

“Native American Religions” | The Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed. John Corrigan (Oxford University Press, 2018) <pdf>

“An Equation of Language and Spirit: Comparative Philology and the Early Study of American Indian Religions” | Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 27.3 (2015): 195-219 <pdf>

“Whiteness” | Dictionary of American History, Supplement: America in the World, 1776 to the Present, ed. Edward Blum, Cara L. Burnidge, Emily Conroy-Krutz, and David Kinkela (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2016) <pdf>

“Navigating Conversational Turns: Grounding Difficult Discussions on Racism” (co-authored with Beth Godbee and Moira Ozias) | Praxis: A Writing Center Journal 5.1 (2007) <pdf>

essays

Preston Singletary’s “Raven and the Box of Daylight” | The Commons, APRIL: Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life, August 13, 2024

Buying and Selling Narratives of Health: Sources and Methods in the Study of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company | American Religion Journal Supplement, July 21, 2023 (companion piece to “Before and Beyond the New Age”)

US landmarks bearing racist and Colonial references are renamed to reflect Indigenous values | The Conversation, April 26, 2021

Memory | A Universe of Terms, The Immanent Frame, May 29, 2020

Including Religion in the Standing Rock Syllabus | The Revealer, February 9, 2017

Resisting the “Inevitable” Narrative: Standing Rock’s Anti-Colonial Eventualities | The Revealer, December 7, 2016

blog posts

posts for religion in american history blog

collaborative projects, past & present

Dees_LanguageMap_Colorful
John Wesley Powell’s map of American Indian languages, 1890. Powell was the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology from 1879 until his death in 1902.