Dreaming Ourselves Into Being

Reading the Bible on Turtle Island: An Invitation to North American Indigenous Interpretation

By T. Christopher Hoklotubbe and H. Daniel Zacharias

Intervarsity Press, 2025

reviewed by Seana Graham

This recent work came to my attention through a book study at the Episcopal church I attend. I did have a little anxiety at the outset about what the perspective of the book might be, as there is such a long, fraught history between the Christianity of the West and the native peoples of this and other lands.

But I needn’t have worried. First of all, the two authors are Indigenous people themselves, as well as being theological scholars. Perhaps it is best to hear from them what their intention in writing the book was:

We have often been taught to read the Scriptures as condemning our lifeways, that our cultural traditions have nothing to offer the church, nor can they help us understand the Scriptures better. But we are persuaded that thoughtful interpretations of Scripture can actually bring dignity and affirmation to our ancestral ceremonies, lifeways and stories…we will demonstrate how the interpretation of biblical texts in their ancient contexts show how ancient Judeans, Hebrews and Christ-followers believed and lived in ways surprisingly similar to Indigenous peoples. As we will discuss, there are assets within Indigenous cultures that can help us all be better, even more historically grounded readers of Scripture. We are also persuaded that there are assets in every person’s traditional world view and culture that can illuminate the Scripture, and so this is also a book for non-Indigenous readers as well. We hope they would find as much nourishment, fresh ideas, and even lessons in history as our Indigenous audiences and further invite them to investigate the assets and theological resources of their own ancestral heritages.

The book does not shy away from the historical suffering of native peoples at the hands of colonizers to make its point. The Trail of Tears that the Cherokees, Choctaws and other tribes were forced to walk, the ‘scooping up’ of Indigenous children to be placed in boarding schools and the many broken treaties between Indigenous peoples and governments (both of the U.S. and Canada) are described and not sanitized. But the authors believe that reconciliation and the healing of old wounds are possible, that there is ‘good medicine’ to be found in these traditions. The authors are close readers and careful connectors of ancient texts and practices.

Personally, I found this book very liberating and mind-expanding. There are many ways of thinking about our traditions and to my mind, the more the merrier. In some kind of happy synchronicity, I happened to come upon this quote from Ruth Ozeki while I was reading this book. It comes from a story called “The Typing Lady” and you can find it in a new collection of hers, bearing the same name.

…when we read a story, we bring our own lives to bear on it and make it ours, no matter what the writer might have intended. Stories are like that. They are collaborations between people who read and people who type. They are how we co-create each other and dream ourselves into being.

To dream ourselves into being is a process, not the work of a moment, and I expect I will be returning to and reflecting on this fascinating book for a long time to come. 

Seana Graham is the book review editor at Escape Into Life. She has also reviewed for the biography website Simply Charly. She attempts to keep up with her various blogs, including Confessions of Ignorance, where she tries to learn a little bit more about the many things she does not know. She has published stories in a variety of literary journals. The recent anthology Annihilation Radiation  from Storgy Press, includes one of them. Santa Cruz Noir, a title from Akashic Press, features a story of hers about the city in which she currently resides. 

Get Reading the Bible on Turtle Island from Intervarsity Press

trailer for Reading the Bible on Turtle Island at Intervarsity Press

Interview with the authors by Ryley Heppner on YouTube

Interview with the authors at Shifting Cultures on YouTube

Get The Typing Lady and Other Fictions at Penguin Random House