Prof. Dr. Philip P. Arnold

Philip P. Arnold was a guest from May until June 2023. He is Associate Professor of the Department of Religion, and a core faculty member of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University. He is the Founding Director of the Skä·noñh—Great Law of Peace Center, (2012-15) and repurposed the “French Fort” on Onondaga Lake which celebrated the colonial presence in 1656-58. The new Center tells the ancient story of the formation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tradition known as the Great Law of Peace and its influences on American culture. The Skä·noñh Center is a collaboration between the Onondaga Nation, Onondaga County, Syracuse University and other educational and cultural institutions in the Syracuse area. He is the President of the Indigenous Values Initiative, which is a non-profit organization to support the work of the Skä·noñh—Great Law of Peace Center, the American Indian Law Alliance, and sister organizations and initiatives to educate the general public about the values of the Haudenosaunee. In 2007 he organized the Doctrine of Discovery Study Group and listserve to study the legacy of Christianity’s destruction of Indigenous Peoples. With his wife Sandra Bigtree he co-hosts the Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery podcast and is the PI for “200 Years of Johnson v. McIntosh: Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism,” a 3-year (2022-24) grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. He is co-editor of the Syracuse University Press series Haudenosaunee and Indigenous Worlds and a founding member of NOON (Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation). His books are Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (1999); Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree (edited with Ann Gold, 2001); The Gift of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love (2012) and Urgency of Indigenous Values (Syracuse University Press, 2023).