Abstract:
This essay explores the first chapter of the Book of Daniel as an example of resistance
against an empire. Using the experience of Native Americans, especially children at the
Carlisle Residential Indian School, the tropes of naming, diet, and the body in Daniel 1
are read as a call to resistance and gamesmanship in the narrative environment of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire and the authorial context of the Selucid Hellenistic Empire.
With reference to similar situations in South Africa and elsewhere, this reading of the
story in Daniel 1 sees a promise of God’s support in religious fidelity accompanied by
cultural code switching.
