Topic: The Moth and the Alligator: Relationship in a Whole Other Key

Presenters: Tink Tinker

A Cobb Institute board member suggested that we adopt the practice of “land acknowledgment” to name native tribes dispossessed of their land in our various regions. To assist our reflection, we turned to Tink Tinker, a citizen of the Osage Nation (wazhazhe) and Professor Emeritus at Iliff School of Theology. For nearly three decades he volunteered both administratively and as a traditional spiritual leader at Four Winds American Indian Council in Denver, and has worked closely with the American Indian Movement of Colorado. His topic invites exploration of the clashing worldviews that euro-christians and America’s native peoples bring to the conversation. To get acquainted with Tink Tinker see this lecture at Yale, this critical conversation about American Indian worldview, or this panel conversation at Phillips Seminary honoring the 50th Anniversary of Vine Deloria’s God Is Red. In 2020, The Colonial Compromise was published, with responses to his 2008 book, American Indian Liberation Theology.  

Before coming to the faculty at Iliff in 1985, Tinker had earned a B.A. at New Mexico Highlands University, an M.Div. at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, which named him its Alum of the Year in 2004. He had been teaching for several years in the Bay area before joining the Iliff faculty in 1985. At this speaker’s bureau website you can find further biographical information, a list of his books, and a 4-minute video excerpt of his message to the United Methodist 2012 General Conference.

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