David Walsh
Associate Professor
Religious Studies
Contact
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Education
PhD Religious Studies, Arizona State University, 2015
MA Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2008
Other : Women and Gender Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2007
BA English and Philosophy, Colorado State University, 2004
Academic Focus
Indigenous Religions; Anthropology of Religion; Environmental Humanities; Intersections of Gender, Ethnicity, Decolonization, and Religion
Dr. Walsh is a non-Native scholar of Indigenous religious traditions with particular interests in Native American relationships with their environment. Notable publications are listed below along with courses routinely taught. David is faculty advisor for the campus club SIA (Students for Indigenous Awareness) and facilitates the campus Land Acknowledgement Committee.
Beginning with a Fullbright Fellowship in 2010, Professor Walsh has conducted extensive ethnographic work with the Dene people of subarctic Canada. David is fascinated by Dene relationships with caribou and other food animals, particularly how Dene negotiate these relationships in the era of climate change and greatly reduced caribou populations. David has also worked with many Indigenous Peoples and Nations including the Hopi, Navajo, and Yaqui in Arizona, the Lakota at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and with Water Protectors at the #NoDAPL movement in Standing Rock, North Dakota. He is currently writing a book manuscript based on ethnographic work with the Dene.
David brings his research into the classroom through his publications, interests, and lots of stories. He teaches courses on Native American religions and this focus permeates his other courses on nature and the environment, on colonialism and religious resistance movements, a survey course on religion in America, and the Religious Studies' theories and methods course.
Courses Taught
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Article The Nature of Food: Indigenous Dene Foodways and Ontologies in the Era of Climate Change” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis (2015), reprinted in Indigenous Religions (2018) ed. Harvey
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Article “Feeding the Fire: Food and reciprocity among the Dene.” Religious Studies and Theology, ed. Anne Vallely, 35 (2) 2016: 123-130.
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Chapter “Babylon Inna Hopiland: Articulations of Tradition and Social Injustice by the Hopi Reggae Musician Casper Loma-da-wa.” In Indigenous Pop (2016), eds. Jeff Berglund et al.
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Chapter “Spiritual not Religious, Dene not Indigenous: Dene Environmental Relationships as Local Traditions.” The Brill Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) (2017), eds. Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft
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Chapter “‘They Call Us Caribou Eaters’: Negotiating Tlicho Dene Relationships with Caribou” Native Foodways in a Global Economy (2021), ed. Michael J. Zogry.
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Article “Indigenous Movement, Settler Colonialism: A History of Tlicho Dene Continuity through Travel.” Material Religion Dec. 18 (1) 2022: 46-60.