College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Philosophy and Religious Studies
Rank
Assistant Professor
Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009
Type of Work
Book
Publication Information
University of Nebraska Press, 2017
Description of Work
Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879–2009 is a narrative of American religion and how it intersected with land in the American West. Prior to 1881, Utes lived on the largest reservation in North America—twelve million acres of western Colorado. Brandi Denison takes a broad look at the Ute land dispossession and resistance to disenfranchisement by tracing the shifting cultural meaning of dirt, a physical thing, into land, an abstract idea. This shift was made possible through the development and deployment of an idealized American religion based on Enlightenment ideals of individualism, Victorian sensibilities about the female body, and an emerging respect for diversity and commitment to religious pluralism that was wholly dependent on a separation of economics from religion. As the narrative unfolds, Denison shows how Utes and their Anglo-American allies worked together to systematize a religion out of existing ceremonial practices, anthropological observations, and Euro-American ideals of nature. A variety of societies then used religious beliefs and practices to give meaning to the land, which in turn shaped inhabitants’ perception of an exclusive American religion. Ultimately, this movement from the tangible to the abstract demonstrates the development of a normative American religion, one that excludes minorities even as they are the source of the idealized expression.
Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009
Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879–2009 is a narrative of American religion and how it intersected with land in the American West. Prior to 1881, Utes lived on the largest reservation in North America—twelve million acres of western Colorado. Brandi Denison takes a broad look at the Ute land dispossession and resistance to disenfranchisement by tracing the shifting cultural meaning of dirt, a physical thing, into land, an abstract idea. This shift was made possible through the development and deployment of an idealized American religion based on Enlightenment ideals of individualism, Victorian sensibilities about the female body, and an emerging respect for diversity and commitment to religious pluralism that was wholly dependent on a separation of economics from religion. As the narrative unfolds, Denison shows how Utes and their Anglo-American allies worked together to systematize a religion out of existing ceremonial practices, anthropological observations, and Euro-American ideals of nature. A variety of societies then used religious beliefs and practices to give meaning to the land, which in turn shaped inhabitants’ perception of an exclusive American religion. Ultimately, this movement from the tangible to the abstract demonstrates the development of a normative American religion, one that excludes minorities even as they are the source of the idealized expression.
Biographical Statement
Brandi Denison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. Her research and teaching interests include American Religious History, specializing in the American West with particular attention to American Indian Religions. She is interested in the intersection of land, race, and religion, as well as gender, violence, memory, and theories of religion. Her first book, Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009, was published by University of Nebraska Press in 2017. She is active in the American Academy of Religion, where she co-chairs the Religion in the American West group, a new AAR group that she helped propose. She is also on the steering committee of the Religion, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism group. Dr. Denison is also the editor for the Religion Compass.