#  Remembering Inés M. Talamantez, Influential Scholar of Native American Religious Traditions 

 





February 28, 2020

 

 

Harvard Divinity School joins the rest of the religious studies community in honoring the life of Inés M. Talamantez, Professor of Native American Religious Traditions at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Talamantez, once a visiting professor at HDS, died on September 27, 2019, after decades of influential scholarship and teaching. She arrived at UCSB in 1978 after an already impressive academic career, including an interdisciplinary PhD in Ethnopoetics, Linguistics, and Anthropology at UC San Diego, completed while raising seven children as a single mother.

From 1991 to 1993, Talamantez was Visiting Professor of Native American Religions at HDS. During a time when the School’s faculty was less diverse, she served as a mentor to students of color in sociology and anthropology who have gone on to be leaders in their fields. Her courses expanded the worldviews of those who were lucky enough to participate. One of them, her class on Native American religious traditions, required five teaching fellows, as it was packed with over 100 people. She was also an affiliate of the Center for the Study of World Religions during the 1992-93 academic year.

At UCSB, Talamantez created an undergraduate minor in Native American studies and was a founding member of the American Indian and Indigenous Collective. Together with students and colleagues, she founded a unit in Native American religious traditions within the American Academy of Religion (AAR). She also helped found the Society for the Study of Native American Religious Traditions, creating a global community of scholars to advance the scholarship and recognition of Native Peoples in academia.

Talamantez in 2018 completed a book manuscript, *The Apache Pollen Path: Mescalero Female Initiation Ceremony*, which reflects her own knowledge as an Apache woman and decades of research in its exploration of how the Mescalero Apache produce strong, exemplary women through the ceremony of Isánáklésh Gotal.

Talamantez’s scholarship exemplified deep commitment to indigenous communities and their languages. As a matriarch of her tribe, the Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, she continuously included members of her community in the production of interpretive knowledge, staking her work in the belief that scholarship must be accessible to the people it is about.

Professor Talamantez’s brilliance as a scholar, activist, and teacher is a legacy that will continue to brighten and transform the lives of her family, students, colleagues, and readers.

*—by Marissa Compton, HDS correspondent*



 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ Faculty and Research ](/discover-stories-about/faculty-and-research)
- [ Faculty News and Research ](/news-category/faculty-news-and-research)
- [ Native Americans ](/topic-tags/native-americans)