David Walsh

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.