George E. "Tink" Tinker is an American Indian scholar of the Osage Nation who taught for more than three decades at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist Church theological school, where he focused his scholarship on the decolonization of American Indian Peoples.
Tinker is the Clifford Baldridge Emeritus Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, where he taught from 1985 until 2017.
For 25 years he served pro bono as the director and spiritual leader of Four Winds American Indian Council.
In his best known work, American Indian Liberation, Tinker argues that, "The intellectual and religious realms have been crucial to colonial political and economic domination of indigenous peoples.
[3] Tinker's recent work has also examined the historical and institutional controversy and surrounding an atrocity where a book of Christian history that was bound in the skin of an Indigenous Man and gifted to Iliff School of Theology.
Although the human skin was removed and given to American Indian Movement representatives in the 1970s, a non-disclosure agreement silenced the institutional role played by the school where the book was displayed for eighty years.
With the support of Thomas Wolfe, the current president of the Iliff School, Tinker has worked to build awareness about the book and the lingering ways that institutions benefit from their participation in colonialism.
“How the Eurochristian Invasion of Turtle Island Created the Environmental Crises: Focus on an Early ‘Immigration’,” in Displacement Climes: Shifting Climates, Shifting People, edited by Miguel de la Torre (in press).
“The Corons and American Indian Genocide: Weaponizing Infectious Disease as the Continuation of a eurochristian Religious Project,” 2020 Hindsight: The Racial Realization and Religious Significance of the COVID-19 Pandemic, edited by Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas.
“Much Ado about Nothing,” in Faith and Resistance after Trump, edited by Miguel de la Torre (Orbis, 2021), pp. 184–192.
by Mitri Raheb and Miguel A. de la Torre (Lexington Books, Fortress Academic, 2022), 175-193.
“Osage Kettle Carriers: Marmitons, Scullery Boys, Deviants and Gender Choices,” The New Polis (July 24, 2019): http://thenewpolis.com/2019/07/24/osage-kettle-carriers-marmitons-scullery-boys-deviants-and-gender-choices-tink-tinker-wazhazhe-osage-nation/.
“’Damn it, he’s an Injun!’ Christian Murder, Colonial Wealth, and Tanned Human Skin,” The New Polis, January 21, 2019: http://thenewpolis.com/2019/01/21/damn-it-hes-an-injun-christian-murder-colonial-wealth-and-tanned-human-skin-tink-tinker-wazhazhe-udsethe/.
“The Irrelevance of Euro-christian Dichotomies for Indigenous Peoples: Beyond Non-violence to a Vision of Cosmic Balance.” Peacemaking and the Challenge of Violence in World Religions.
“American Indians and Ecotheology: Alterity and Worldview.” In Eco-Lutheranism: Lutheran Perspectives on Ecology (ELCA Association of Teaching Theologians, Proceedings, 2012).
“‘To the Victor Belong the Spoils’: An Afterword on Colonialist History.” In Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip’s War, by Billy J. Stratton.
“Why I Don’t Believe in a Creator.” In Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: Conversations on Creation, Land Justice, and Life Together, edited by Steve Heinrichs.
In Beyond the Pale: Reading Christian Ethics from the Margins, edited by Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Miguel de la Torre.
"Decolonizing the Language of Lutheran Theology: Confessions, Mission, Indians and the Globalization of Hybridity."
"An American Indian Cultural Universe: We Are All Related," in Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson, eds., Moral Ground.
“Thief, Slave-Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline,” co-authored with Mark Freeland.