History Department Event: "The Rising of God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" | Louis Warren

Louis Warren is the W. Turrentine Jackson  Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches environmental history, the history of the American West, and U.S. history

"The Rising of God's Red Son:  The Ghost Dance Religion and the Dawn of the Twentieth Century." 

 The Ghost Dance of 1890 promised Indian believers a new earth and the resurrection of the old ways, but was buried with the dead at the Wounded Knee Massacre - -or so the history books tell us.  But in fact, the Ghost Dance did not die.  It spread, adapted and survived, influencing religious practice among Indian peoples long into the twentieth century.  How did it survive?  What did it offer believers that helped them make their way in the modern world? And how have  so many historians, writers, and filmmakers been so wrong about this American religion?   Louis Warren  answers these questions by re-examining the origins and meaning of the Ghost Dance, offering a bold reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in American history. 

Sponsored by the History Department at Harvard University. Co-Sponsors: Harvard’s Division of Arts and Humanities, The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, Harvard University Native American Program