Philip P. Arnold is Associate Professor of Indigenous religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. Arnold specializes in the Indigenous religious traditions of the Americas. He worked in Mesoamerican materials for fifteen years culminating in Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (University of Colorado Press, 1999). Since 1990 Arnold has been working more directly on issues related to Indigenous people in North America. He co-edited the book with Ann Grodzins Gold titled Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree (Ashgate, 2001). He is finishing a textbook Indigenous Religions: An Introduction (NYU Press, 2009). Currently he is collaborating with the Haudenosaunee (i.e., the Six Nations Iroquois, or “People of the Longhouse”), in particular with the leadership of the Onondaga Nation, which is Central Fire of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and located 5 miles south of Syracuse. In addition several articles and two book projects Arnold is active in issues related to “religion, spirituality, and land.” He has given several talks to local groups through his association with NOON (Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation), which is a grassroots organization sponsored through the Syracuse Peace Council. It seeks to communicate with people of the greater Syracuse community about the Onondaga Nation Land Rights Action. Arnold’s talks for NOON associate matters of religion, environmentalism, social justice, and land with respect to Haudenosaunee-U.S. relations. Recently he accompanied a Haudenosaunee delegation to Tokyo Japan for a series of meetings with scholars of religion and Indigenous people from around the world. He collaborated with people of the Onondaga Nation on an International Day of Peace event at Onondaga Lake in 2005-07 called Roots of Peacemaking: Indigenous Values, Global Crisis. Speakers have included Jane Goodall, Audrey Shenandoah, Tonya Gonella-Frichner and Oren Lyons. Since 2007 Arnold has organized the Doctrine of Discovery Study Group, which brings together academics, students, community members and Haudenosaunee people from the city and the Onondaga Nation to discuss the legacy of Christianity in the destruction of Indigenous peoples. Several events have grown out of this group.
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