"Well-researched and eminently readable. . . . This rich book is highly recommended. . . . Copious endnotes and a serviceable index increase the scholarly value of the book."
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Western Historical Quarterly"Groundbreaking and important. . . . A seminal study of American Indian affairs in the early twentieth century recommended for all libraries and academic programs in which modern Native American and indigenous religious issues are discussed."
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American Historical Review"Well-researched and intelligent. . . . Offers a compelling cultural history. . . . This approach to discourse of religion serves up a rich helping of analysis for religious studies and cultural and intellectual history."
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Journal of Religion"While [Wenger's] rich history of the intersection of Pueblo customs and American law will doubtless be useful for those within American Indian studies, her historically routed mediations on the category of religion makes this book essential reading for everyone who studies American religions, and arguably many others in religious studies as well. Wenger's meticulously researched and theoretically sophisticated work is exceptional in any number of ways. . . . So often, books engage well with either theoretical ideas or with detailed historical work. Wenger is able to do both."
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Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies"This is a work of exemplary archival research and conceptual nuance. I cannot overstate the importance of the insights Wenger provides for our understanding of the concepts or religion and religious freedom for Native Americans today."
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Journal of Arizona History"[A] fascinating account that will interest folklorists for its careful exploration of the social and political context in which expressive culture is performed."
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Journal of Folklore Research"Scholars have long needed an insightful study of this transitional period in Indian affairs, and Wenger's focus on the Pueblo dance controversy provides an ideal means to explore it. The study is distinguished by its extensive archival research and by the careful inclusion of numerous Pueblo voices."
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Journal of American History"An absolutely terrific book. . . . Deserves a symposium session all its own, with multiple native and non-native commentators and discussants. Wenger identifies a categorical shift in how both Indians and non-Indians talk about Native American belief systems . . . and really provides the foundation for another way to look at the discourse about American Indian 'sacredness' thereafter. I shall be recommending it everywhere."
-Peter Nabokov, University of California, Los Angeles; author of
Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places"The reader is provided with an overview of various perspectives . . . which Wenger shares from her extensive research in archives across the nation. . . . [Wenger's] analysis offers Indigenous scholars a vehicle for navigating the confluence between 'documented' history and narratives of oral tradition."
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American Indian Quarterly"Wenger's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the strange career of 'religion' by doing a superb and unmatchable job of recovering the full complexity of how that idea related to the Puebloan dance controversy."
-Joel Martin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
