Overview
Tiffany Hale is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a scholar of Indigenous religious traditions whose work focuses on nineteenth century Native American history and US race relations. Hale teaches courses in global Indigenous religious traditions, Native history, and religion in the Americas. Her first book, Fugitive Religion: The Ghost Dance and Indigenous Resistance After the Civil War, will be released by Yale University Press in 2026.
Research Focus
Native Ratio: Indigeneity as Global Framework
Viewing Indigeneity through the lens of global politics, international diplomacy, and world history raises serious problems of scale. With a few important exceptions, many Indigenous Studies scholars have shied away from global analyses due to an understandable commitment to community-based research methods. This is not a problem per se, since such close studies provide invaluable detail and perspective. This commitment also reflects a move toward more ethical scholarly approaches that center Indigenous worldviews. Field-wide inattention to scale, however, risks eliding the extent to which nation-states, religious institutions, and non-governmental organizations are deeply enmeshed in efforts to manage Indigenous populations in ways that necessarily involve global and transnational forces. The 2025-26 theme of “Scale” is uniquely suited to the aim of this project, which will help university students and policymakers make sense of the complex ways that Indigeneity operates at international levels.
