George Tinker

George (Tink) Tinker is an enrolled member of the Osage (ni-u-koⁿ'ska wa-zha-zha) Nation and has been an activist in urban American Indian communities for many years. He joined the faculty of Iliff School of Theology in 1985 and, as Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions, has brought an Indian perspective to this predominantly Amer-European seminary. 

As an American Indian academic, Dr. Tinker is committed to a scholarly endeavour that takes seriously both the liberation of the Indian peoples from their historic oppression as colonized communities and the liberation of White Americans, the historic colonizers and oppressors of Indian peoples. Trained in biblical studies at the Graduate Theological Union, has has moved steadily away from that field of inquiry and towards American Indian studies and American Indian theological discourse in particular. Rather than focusing on mere intellectual ideas and the realms of metaphysics and notions of god, his theological reflection is unashamedly political and social in its reflection. It is an intellectual reflection from within the community experience of Indian peoples and with a clear focus on the well-being of the Indian community. He considers his own community involvement as crucial his intellectual development. Tinker is the author of Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Fortress Press, 1993); co-author of Native American Theology (Orbis Press, 2001); and some three dozen journal articles. An ordained member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, he is a member of EATWOT, an association with firm commitments to liberative theology and praxis; a member of the Society for the Study of Native American Religious Traditions; and a member of the Colorado American Indian Movement.