Against Culture Development, Politics, And Religion In Indian Alaska

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

Kirk Dombrowski, Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 204 pp. Paper, $19.95.

Kirk Dombrowski’s book Against Culture is an anthropological discussion of how the Natives of Southeastern Alaska have negotiated “culture” through their own economic, political, and spiritual practices. The book is split into two parts, the ﬁrst half deals with the political, economic, and kinship negotiations of culture among Native Alaskan villagers, and how ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) has changed identity politics among the local Native population. The second half of the book focuses on Pentecostalism and its inﬂ uence and growth among Native Alaskans, and how Pentecostal villagers stand “against culture.” Because of its anthropological grounding many scholars of religion have failed to notice that the book contains one of the few modern studies of Native Pentecostal- ism and how it relates to Native culture — the main focus of this review.

Dombrowski’s book is notable in that it attempts to weave together the disparate factions of religion, economics, identity politics, and political processes in order to take a close look at Native Alaskan village life. He quickly and deftly sketches out how “culture” is imposed by outsiders. Often, these outsiders are in the guise of the federal government and its laws such as ANCSA — a federal act that forced corporate style economics on Native Alaskans’ mostly subsistence based way of life. Dombrowski does a commendable job explaining various aspects of village economic and political life, however, he was not prepared to stum- ble across the Pentecostal churches that he discovered when he began his ﬁ eldwork — a fact that he acknowledges in the beginning of the book.

This lack of background in understanding the historical roots of Pentecostalism among Native Alaskans is deeply problematic. While the author acknowledges that Pentecostal missions existed in the villages that he visited before the 1970s, he provides very little history to help his readers. He mentions the various national denominations that set up missions among Natives (Assemblies of God, Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Church of God, United Pentecostal and independent churches), but he does not explain any diﬀ er- ences between the groups and their own unique approaches to Native missions. Dombrowski also fails to outline the rich missionary history of other Christian groups that pre-dated the Pentecostal movement, such as the Presbyterians and the Russian Orthodox. While this criticism of a lack of historical groundedness might seem like a small detail, it is also impor- tant to point out that by failing to link his work with a broader understanding of Pentecos- tal history, Dombrowski partially undermines his intriguing and deeply layered argument.

Because “culture” is constructed by outsiders and imposed upon Native people, the author makes the point that “the ordinary ambiguity that virtually all people feel toward their culture . . . must be lived diﬀ erently by Native Americans than by others. For Native Americans to be against their culture, they must risk losing their claim to being ‘natives’ in ways that matter immensely” (p. 14). He then goes on to state, “Pentecostal and Evangelical church membership, I will argue, is part of the process through which many Southeast Alaska Natives live against their culture” (p. 14). A deeper understanding of this thesis reveals that Dombrowski believes that Pentecostalism leads to a dramatic denial of Culture (as a whole) not just speciﬁ c cultures, and states that “For this reason, many Pentecostal coverts will tell you that they are not just against native culture, but against all Culture” (p. 15).

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

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Some of the information that the author grounds himself in is surprisingly simplistic and based on a surface understanding of Pentecostalism. First of all, Dombrowski lumps together “evangelical and Pentecostal” churches, making no distinction between the groups. A lack of a real understanding of Pentecostal theology also hobbles his argument. By not under- standing what “gifts of the spirit” or “spirit possession” really means in Pentecostal terms, he fails to give the reader a deep understanding of their importance in believer’s lives. He repeatedly asserts that Pentecostalism in general (not just among Native Alaskans) attracts mainly those who are marginalized within societies. While such a claim is grounded in truth, many scholars of Pentecostalism also know that the movement is steadily growing among the middle-classes of the world — how would that fact change the general argument of the book? Dombrowski also notes that it was churches with Native pastors that had the largest number of congregants and thus inﬂ uence, but he never really explains why, or dis- cusses how the Native pastors negotiated Pentecostal “culture” in any length. By failing to see how Native culture has shaped and caused Pentecostalism to evolve (versus how Pente- costalism has created divisions and change within Native culture), Dombrowski loses half the story. Maybe Pentecostal Natives in this one village do assert themselves as being “against culture,” but how has that assertion shaped the “culture” of the Pentecostal move- ment itself? Can we really state that all Pentecostals are “against Culture” as a whole? To be fair, Dombrowski is an anthropologist, not a scholar of religion or religious history. His book is ambitious in scope and the parts on the economic and political workings of village life are cogent and enlightening. He raises an intriguing question — how do people negotiate and understand Culture through the prism of religion as well as politics, economics, and issues of identity? But in terms of thoroughly understanding religious iden- tity and Pentecostalism, this book, while raising important questions, only gives a thin understanding of what it means to be a modern Pentecostal Native within the greater Native American culture.

Reviewed by Angela Tarango

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