Education
Born in Ridgefield, Connecticut on September 9, 1920, Brown studied at Haverford College where he received his undergraduate degree. In anthropology and a Doctor of Philosophy in history of religions.
Born in Ridgefield, Connecticut on September 9, 1920, Brown studied at Haverford College where he received his undergraduate degree. In anthropology and a Doctor of Philosophy in history of religions.
His seminal work was a book entitled, The Sacred Pipe, an account of his discussions with the Lakota holy man, Black Elk, regarding the religious rites of his people. He went on to study at Stanford University and the University of Stockholm, earning an Master of Arts Brown’s keen interest in the traditions of Native Americans led him to seek out Black Elk, who had already told his life story in the book, Black Elk Speaks. In 1947, three years before Black Elk"s death, Brown lived with the Lakota Sioux holy man for a year while recording his account of the "seven rites of the Oglala Sioux".
Black Elk had requested that the book, The Sacred Pipe, be created so that the beliefs of his people could be preserved and become more fully understood by both Native Americans and the world at large.
He taught at the University of Montana, in the Department of Religious Studies, from 1972 until his retirement in 1989. He was also a frequent contributor of articles on Native American spirituality to the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion.
After a long battle with Alzheimer"s, he died at his home in Stevensville, Montana, on September 19, 2000, at the age of 80. Animals of the Soul, Sacred Animals of the Oglala Sioux, Element Books Limited, 1993
Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Traditions, (with Emily Cousins) Oxford University Press, 2001
The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian, World Wisdom.
1984; Commemorative edition, 2007
Foreign brevity’s sake, a list of out-of-print books, as well as books in which Brown contributed chapters, are not listed here.
