Michael McNally ’85

Education & Professional History

Carleton College, BA; Harvard Divinity School, MDiv; Harvard University, AM, PhD

Michael D. McNally (Carleton, B.A.; Harvard Univ., M.Div., M.A., Ph.D.), 2001-, teaches courses in American religion and culture and Native American religious traditions. His special interests include Native American traditions and the law, tradition and history of Minnesota’s Anishinaabe/Ojibwe people, Indigenized Christianities, and lived religion in America. He is author of Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the 1st Amendment (Princeton U.Press, 2020); Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion (2009), Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (2000), editor of Art of Tradition: Sacred Story, Song, and Dance among Michigan’s Anishinaabe (2009), as well as book chapters and journal articles.  He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017 for his work on Native religions and law.

Highlights & Recent Activity

Guggenheim Fellowship (2017-18)

Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the 1st Amendment (Princeton U.Press, 2020)

Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion (Columbia U. Press, 2009)

Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief & a Native Culture in Motion (Oxford, 2000; repr. MN Hist. Soc. Press, 2009)

ReligionsMN.org: Co-Director of ongoing public scholarship project on religious diversity in MN.

Sacred Minnesota: Project Advisor to 4-part documentary short partnership with Twin Cities Public Television (Spring, 2021)

Outdoors, Hockey