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Indigenous Americans:
Spirituality and Ecos
Jack
D. Forbes
 HE
COSMIC VISIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES are significantly diverse. Each nation and
community has its own unique traditions. Still, several characteristics stand
out. First, it is common to envision the creative process of the universe as a
form of thought or mental process. Second, it is common to have a source of
creation that is plural, either because several entities participate in
creation or because the process as it unfolds includes many sacred actors
stemming from a First Principle (Father/Mother or Grandfather/Grandmother).
Third, the agents of creation are seldom pictured as human, but are depicted
instead as “wakan” (holy), or animal-like (coyote, raven, great white hare,
etc.), or as forces of nature (such as wind/breath). The Lakota medicine man
Lame Deer says that the Great Spirit “is not like a human being. . . . He is a
power. That power could be in a cup of coffee. The Great Spirit is no old man
with a beard.”1
The concept perhaps resembles the elohim of the Jewish Genesis, the
plural form of eloi, usually mistranslated as “God,” as though it
were singular.
Perhaps the most important aspect
of indigenous cosmic visions is the conception of creation as a living process,
resulting in a living universe in which a kinship exists between all things.
Thus the Creators are our family, our Grandparents or Parents, and all of their
creations are children who, of necessity, are also our relations.
An ancient Ashiwi (Zuñi) prayer-song states:
That our earth mother may
wrap herself
In a four-fold robe of white meal [snow]; . . .
When our earth mother is
replete with living waters,
When spring comes,
The source of our flesh,
All the different kinds of
corn
We shall lay to rest in the
ground with the earth mother’s
living waters,
They will be made into new
beings,
Coming out standing into
the daylight of their Sun father, to
all sides
They will stretch out their
hands. . . .2
Thus the Mother Earth is a living being, as are the
waters and the Sun.
Juan
Matus told Carlos Castaneda that Genaro, a Mazateco, “was just now embracing
this enormous earth . . . but the earth knows that Genaro loves it and it
bestows on him its care. . . . This earth, this world. For a warrior there can
be no greater love. . . . This lovely being, which is alive to its last
recesses and understands every feeling. . . .”3
Or, as Lame Deer puts it:
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We must try to use the pipe for mankind, which
is on the road to self-destruction. . . . This can be done only if all of us,
Indians and non-Indians alike, can again see ourselves as part of
the earth, not as an enemy from the outside who tries to
impose its will on it. Because we . . . also
know that, being a living part
of the earth, we cannot harm any
part of her without hurting ourselves.4 |
European writers long ago
referred to indigenous Americans’ ways as “animism,” a term that means
“life-ism.” And it is true that most or perhaps all Native Americans see the
entire universe as being alive—that is, as having movement and an ability to
act. But more than that, indigenous Americans tend to see this living world as
a fantastic and beautiful creation engendering extremely powerful feelings of
gratitude and indebtedness, obliging us to behave as if we are related to one
another. An overriding characteristic of Native North American religion is that
of gratitude, a feeling of overwhelming love and thankfulness for the gifts of
the Creator and the earth/universe. As a Cahuilla elder, Ruby Modesto, has
stated: “Thank you mother earth, for holding me on your breast. You always love
me no matter how old I get.”5Or
as Joshua Wetsit, an Assiniboine elder born in 1886, put it: “But our Indian
religion is all one religion, the Great Spirit. We’re thankful that we’re on
this Mother Earth. That’s the first thing when we wake up in the morning, is to
be thankful to the Great Sprit for the Mother Earth: how we live, what it
produces, what keeps everything alive.”6
Many years ago, the Great Spirit gave the Shawnee, Sauk, Fox, and other peoples
maize or corn. This gift arrived when a beautiful woman appeared from the sky.
She was fed by two hunters, and in return she gave them, after one year, maize,
beans, and tobacco. “We thank the Great Spirit for all the benefits he has
conferred upon us. For myself, I never take a drink of water from a spring,
without being mindful of his goodness.”7
Although
it is certainly true that Native Americans ask for help from spiritual beings,
it is my personal observation that giving thanks, or, in some cases, giving
payment for gifts received, is a salient characteristic of most public
ceremonies. Perhaps this is related to the overwhelmingly positive attitude
Native Americans have had toward the Creator and the world of “nature,” or what
I call the “Wemi Tali,” the “All Where” in the Delaware-Lenápe language. Slow
Buffalo, a teacher, is remembered to have said about a thousand years ago:
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Remember . . . the ones you are going to
depend upon. Up in the heavens, the Mysterious One, that is your grandfather.
In between the earth and the heavens, that is your father. This earth is your
grandmother. The dirt is your grandmother. Whatever grows in the earth is your
mother. It is just like a sucking baby on a mother. . . . |
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Always remember, your grandmother is
underneath your feet always. You are always on her, and your father is above.8 |
Winona LaDuke, a contemporary
leader from White Earth Anishinabe land, tells us that:
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Native American teachings describe the
relations all around—animals, fish, trees, and rocks—as our brothers, sisters,
uncles, and grandpas. . . . |
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These relations are honored in ceremony, song,
story, and life that keep relations close—to buffalo, sturgeon, salmon,
turtles, bears, wolves, and panthers. These are our older relatives—the ones
who came before and taught us how to live.9 |
In 1931 Standing Bear, a Lakota,
said when reciting an ancient prayer:
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To mother earth, it is said . . . you are the
only mother that has shown mercy to your children. . . . Behold me, the four
quarters of the earth, relative I am. . . . All over the earth faces of all
living things are alike. Mother earth has turned these faces out of the earth
with tenderness. Oh Great Spirit behold them, all these faces with children in
their hands.10 |
Again in 1931, Black Elk, the
well-known Lakota medicine man, told us that “The four-leggeds and the wings of
the air and the mother earth were supposed to be relative-like. . . . The first
thing an Indian learns is to love each other and that they should be
relative-like to the four-leggeds.”11
And thus we see this very strong kinship relation to the Wemi Tali, the “All
Where”: “The Great Spirit made the flowers, the streams, the pines, the
cedars—takes care of them. . . . He takes care of me, waters me, feeds me,
makes me live with plants and animals as one of them. . . . All of nature is in
us, all of us is in nature.”12
At
the center of all of the creation is the Great Mystery. As Black Elk said:
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When we use the water in the sweat lodge we
should think of Wakan-Tanka, who is always flowing, giving His power and life
to everything. . . . The round fire place at the center of the sweat lodge is
the center of the universe, in which dwells Wakan-Tanka, with His power which
is the fire. All these things are Wakan [holy and mystery] and must be
understood deeply if we really wish to purify ourselves, for the power of a
thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.13 |
Luther Standing Bear, writing in
the 1930s, noted:
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The old people came literally to love the soil
and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a
mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people
liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. .
. . The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. . . .
Wherever the Lakota went, he was with Mother Earth. No matter where he roamed
by day or slept by night he was safe with her.14 |
Native people, according to
Standing Bear, were often baffled by the European tendency to refer to nature
as crude, primitive, wild, rude, untamed, and savage. “For the Lakota,
mountains, lakes, rivers, springs, valleys, and woods were all finished beauty.
. . .”15
Of
course, the indigenous tendency to view the earth and other nonorganic entities
as being part of bios (life, living) is seen by many post-1500 Europeans
as simply romantic or nonsensical. When Native students enroll in many biology
or chemistry classes today they are often confronted by professors who are
absolutely certain that rocks are not alive. But in reality these professors
are themselves products of an idea system of materialism and mechanism that is
both relatively modern and indefensible. I have challenged this materialist
perspective in a poem, “Kinship is the Basic Principle of Philosophy,” which I
will partially reproduce here as indicative of some common indigenous
perspectives:
. . .For hundreds of years
certainly
for thousands
Our Native elders
have
taught us
“All My Relations”
means
all living things
and
the entire Universe
“All Our Relations”
they
have said
time
and time again. . . .
Do you doubt still?
a
rock alive? You say
it
is hard!
it
doesn’t move of its own accord!
it
has no eyes!
it
doesn’t think!
but
rocks do move
put
one in a fire
it
will get hot won’t it?
That
means
won’t
you agree?
that
its insides are moving
ever
more rapidly?. . .
So don’t kid me my friend,
rocks
change
rocks
move
rocks
flow
rocks
combine
rocks
are powerful friends
I
have many
big
and small
their
processes, at our temperatures,
are
very slow
but
very deep!
I understand because, you
see,
I
am part rock!
I
eat rocks
rocks
are part of me
I
couldn’t exist without
the
rock in me
We
are all related!
No, it’s alive I tell you,
just
like the old ones say
they’ve
been there
you
know
they’ve
crossed the boundaries
not
with computers
but
with their
very
own beings!16
About a thousand years ago, White
Buffalo Calf Woman came to the ancestors of the Lakota, giving them a sacred
pipe and a round rock. The rock, Black Elk said,
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. . . is the Earth, your Grandmother and
Mother, and it is where you will live and increase. . . . All of this is sacred
and so do not forget! Every dawn as it comes is a holy event, and every day is
holy, for the light comes from your father Wakan-Tanka; and also you must
always remember that the two-leggeds and all the other peoples who stand upon
this earth are sacred and should be treated as such.17 |
Here we see not only the expression of
relatedness on a living earth, but also the sacredness or holiness of events
that some persons take for granted: the dawn, the day, and, in effect, time and
the flow of life in its totality. In relation to all of these gifts, human
beings are expected to be humble, not arrogant, and to respect other creatures.
An ancient Nahua (Mexican) poem tells us that
Those of the white head of
hair, those of the wrinkled face,
our ancestors. . .
They did not come to be
arrogant,
They did not come to go
about looking greedily,
They did not come to be
voracious.
They were such that they
were esteemed on the earth:
They reached the stature of
eagles and jaguars.18
Lame Deer says: “You can tell a good
medicine man by his actions and his way of life. Is he lean? Does he live in a
poor cabin? Does money leave him cold?”19
Thus, humility and a lack of arrogance are accompanied by a tendency toward
simple living, which reinforces the ideal of nonexploitation of other living
creatures. A consciousness of death also adds to the awareness of the
importance of concentrating on the ethical quality of one’s life as opposed to
considerations of quantity of possessions or size of religious edifices. “A
man’s life is short. Make yours a worthy one,” says Lame Deer.
Juan
Matus, in Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan, captures
very well the attitude of many Native people: “. . .You don’t eat five quail;
you eat one. You don’t damage the plants just to make a barbecue. . . . You
don’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially
the people you love. . . .”20
This kind of attitude is found over and over again in the traditions of Native
people, from the basketry and food-gathering techniques of Native Californians
to the characters in the stories of Anna Lee Walters (as in her novel Ghostsinger,
the stories in The Sun is Not Merciful,
or in Talking Indian).
Respect
and humility are the building blocks of indigenous life-ways, since they not
only lead to minimal exploitation of other living creatures but also preclude
the arrogance of aggressive missionary activity and secular imperialism, as
well as the arrogance of patriarchy.
But
Anglo-American “ecologists” often have a very narrow conception of what
constitutes “ecology” and the “environment.” Does this contrast with the Native
American attitude? Let us examine some definitions first. The root of the
concept of environment has to do with “rounding” or “that which arounds
[surrounds] us.” It is similar to Latin vicinitat (Spanish vecinidad
or English vicinity), referring to that which neighbors something, and
also to Greek oikos (ecos), a house and, by extension, a habitation
(Latin dwelling) or area of inhabiting (as in oikoumene, the inhabited
or dwelled-in world). Ecology is the logie or study of ecos, the study
of inhabiting/dwelling, or, as defined in one dictionary, the study of
“organisms and their environment.”
Ecos
(oikos) is “the house we live in, our place of habitation.” But where do
we live and who are we? Certainly we can define ecos in a narrow sense, as our
immediate vicinity, or we can broaden it to include the Sun (which is, of
course, the driving power or energy source in everything that we do), the Moon,
and the entire
known universe (including the Great Creative Power, or Ketanitowit
in Lenápe). Our ecos, from the indigenous point of view, extends out to the
very boundaries of the great totality of existence, the Wemi Tali.
Similarly,
our environment must include the sacred source of creation as well as such
things as the light of the Sun, on which all life processes depend. Thus our
surroundings include the space of the universe and the solar/stellar bodies
that have inspired so much of our human yearnings and dreams.
Ecology,
then, in my interpretation, must be the holistic (and interdisciplinary) study
of the entire universe, the dynamic relationship of its various parts. And
since, from the indigenous perspective, the universe is alive, it follows that
we could speak of geo-ecology as well as human ecology, the ecology of oxygen
as well as the ecology of water.
Many
indigenous thinkers have considered humans part of the Wemi Tali, not separate
from it. As I have written:
| For us, truly, there are no
“surroundings.”
|
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I can lose my hands
and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still
live. . . . But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the
earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die.
All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath,
than is my so-called body. What is my real body? |
| |
We are not autonomous,
self-sufficient beings as European mythology teaches. . . . We are rooted just
like the trees. But our roots come out of our nose and mouth, like an umbilical
cord, forever connected with the rest of the world. . . . |
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Nothing that we do, do we do
by ourselves. We do not see by ourselves. We do not hear by ourselves. . . . We
do not think, dream, invent, or procreate by ourselves. We do not die by
ourselves. . . . |
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I am a point of awareness, a
circle of consciousness, in the midst of a series of circles. One circle is
that which we call “the body.” It is a universe itself, full of millions of
little living creatures living their own “separate” but dependent lives. . . .
But all of these “circles” are not really separate—they are all mutually
dependent upon each other. . . .21 |
We, in fact, have no single edge
or boundary, but are rather part of a continuum that extends outward from our
center of consciousness, both in a perceptual (epistemological-existential) and
in a biophysical sense—our brain centers must have oxygen, water, blood with
all of its elements, minerals, etc., in order to exist, but also, of course,
must connect to the cosmos as a whole. Thus our own personal bodies form part
of the universe directly, while these same bodies are miniature
universes in which, as noted, millions of living creatures subsist, operate,
fight, reproduce, and die.
Anna Lee Walters, the
Otoe-Pawnee teacher and writer, in speaking of prayers, notes:
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“Waconda,” it says in the Otoe language, Great
Mystery, meaning that vital thing or phenomenon in life that cannot ever be
entirely comprehensible to us. What is understood though, through the spoken
word, is that silence is also Waconda, as is the universe and everything
that exists, tangible and intangible, because none of these things are separate
from that life force. It is all Waconda. . . .22 |
Thus ecos for us must include
that which our consciousness inhabits, the house of our soul, our ntchítchank
or lenapeyókan, and must not be limited to a dualistic or
mechanistic-materialistic view of bios. Ecology must be shorn of its
Eurocentric (or, better, reductionist and materialist) perspective and
broadened to include the realistic study of how living centers of
awareness interact with all of their surroundings.
At a practical level this is very
important, because one cannot bring about significant changes in the way in
which the Wemi Tali is being abused without considering the values, economic
systems, ethics, aspirations, and spiritual beliefs of human groups. For
example, the sense of entitlement felt by certain social
groups or classes, the idea of being entitled to exploit resources found
in the lands of other groups or entitled to exploit “space” without any
process of review or permission or approval from all concerned—this sense of
superiority and restless acquisitiveness must be confronted by ecology.
The beauty of our night sky, for
example, now threatened by hundreds or thousands of potential future satellites
and space platforms, by proposed nuclear-powered expeditions to Mars and
space-based nuclear weapons, cannot be protected merely by studying the
physical relations of organisms with the sky. The cultures of all concerned
have to be part of the equation, and within these cultures questions of beauty,
ethics, and sacredness must play a role. Sadly, the U.S. government is the
greatest offender in the threat to space.
When a mountain is to be pulled
down to produce cement, or coal, or cinderstone, or to provide housing for
expanding suburbanites, the questions that must be asked are not only those
relating to stream-flow, future mudslides, fire danger, loss of animal habitat,
air pollution, or damage to stream water quality. Of paramount importance are
also questions of beauty, ownership, and the unequal allocation of wealth and
power that allows rich investors to make decisions affecting large numbers of
creatures based only upon narrow self-interest. Still more difficult are
questions relating to the sacredness of Mother Earth and of the rights of
mountains to exist without being mutilated. When do humans have the right to
mutilate a mountain? Are there procedures that might mitigate such an
aggression? Are there processes that might require that the mountain’s right to
exist in beauty be weighed against the money-making desires of a human or human
group?
We hear a great deal about
“impacts” and how “impacts” must be weighed and/or mitigated. But all too
often, these considerations do not include aesthetics (unless the destruction
is proposed for an area where rich and powerful people live), and very seldom
do we hear about sacredness or the rights of the earth. Indeed, we have
made progress in the United States with the concept of protecting endangered
species, but it is interesting that, for many people, the point of such
protection is essentially pragmatic: we are willing to preserve genetic
diversity (especially as regards plant life) in order to meet potential human
needs. The intrinsic right of different forms of life each to have space and
freedom is seldom evoked. (Even homeless humans have no recognized right to
“space” in the United States).23
All over the Americas, from Chile
to the arctic, Native Americans are engaged in battles with aggressive
corporations and governments that claim the right to set aside small areas
(reserves) for Native people and then to seize the rest of the Native territory
and throw it open to Occidental Petroleum, Texaco, or other profit-seeking
organizations. Often, as in the case of the U’wa people, the concept of the
sacredness of the living earth directly conflicts with the interests of big
corporations and the revenue-hungry neocolonial governments that support them.
It has to be said that some
indigenous governments and groups have also allowed devastating projects to be
developed on their territories. Sometimes there has been grassroots resistance
to the extraction of coal, uranium, and other minerals, but very often the
non-Native government has encouraged (or strong-armed) the indigenous peoples
into agreeing to a contract providing for little or no protection to the
environment.
In her recent book, All Our
Relations, Winona LaDuke focuses on a number of specific
struggles involving Native people in the United States and Canada. She points
out that “Grassroots and land-based struggles characterize most of Native
environmentalism. We are nations of people with distinct land areas, and our
leadership and direction emerge from the land up.”24
LaDuke shows in each of her chapters how different groups of First Nations
people are facing up to serious problems and are seeking to address them at the
local, community level. They are also forming national and international
organizations that seek to help individual nations, in great part through the
sharing of information and technical assistance. In the final analysis,
however, each nation, reserve, or community has to confront its own issues and
develop its own responsible leadership. This must be stressed again and again:
each sovereign Native nation will deal with its own environmental issues in its
own way. There is no single Native American government that can develop a
common indigenous response to the crisis we all face.
Mention should be made here of
the work of Debra Harry, a Northern Paiute activist from the Pyramid Lake
Reservation who is spearheading an information campaign relative to biopiracy
and the dangers of the Human Genome Diversity Project. The collection of Native
American tissue samples and DNA/mtDNA information represents a very serious
environmental threat, since the discovery of unique genetic material could be
used not only for patenting and sale but also for future campaigns of germ or
biological warfare. The latter may seem extreme, but Native peoples have reason
to be cautious about sharing potentially dangerous information with agencies,
governments, and organizations not under their own control. The entire field of
biopiracy, the theft of indigenous knowledge about plants and drugs, represents
another area of great concern, since Native peoples could find themselves
having to pay for the use of their own cultural heritage or for treatment using
genetic material of indigenous origin.25
Many activists are concerned
primarily with the environmental responses of Native Americans belonging to
specific land-based communities recognized as sovereign by the U.S. or Canadian
governments. But in addition, there are millions of Native people who do not
have “tribal” governments that are recognized as legitimate by a state. In
California and Mexico, numerous Mixtec communities must deal with the hazards
of agricultural pesticide, crop-dusting on top of workers, poor housing,
inadequate sanitation, poor or polluted water sources, and a host of other
issues. The Mixtec have responded by organizing around farm-labor issues, as
well as developing their own ways of coping. For example, in Baja California
they are often forced to build their own houses on steep hillsides where they
must use old cast-off truck and auto tires as retaining walls to provide a
level area for living.
Many Native groups, including
Kickapoos, Navajos, Papagos, Zapotecs, and Chinantecs, produce a number of
migrant agricultural laborers. These workers often remain rooted in home
villages to which they may return seasonally. Such persons have a primary
responsibility to their families; they cannot be expected to devote much energy
to environmentalism, apart from attempting to obtain clean water, healthy food,
and sanitary living conditions.
On a positive note, the
environmental awareness of many indigenous American groups translates into a
high respect for women in their communities. It would be hypocritical to seek
to control women or restrict their opportunities for full self-realization
while pretending to respect living creatures. This is a significant issue,
because a great deal of evidence has shown that when women have high status,
education, and choices, they tend to enrich a community greatly and to
stabilize population growth. Many traditional American societies have been able
to remain in balance with their environments because of the high status of
women, a long nursing period for children, and/or the control of reproductive
decisions by women.26
Many of the leaders in the Native struggle today are women.
Many Native homelands are much
reduced in size from former years and are often located on land of poor
quality. These conditions can create overuse of resources. Human population
growth is, of course, one of the fundamental issues of environmental science.
Along with the unequal distribution of resources and the taking away of
resources (such as the removal of oil from indigenous lands, leaving polluted
streams and poisoned soil) from militarily weaker peoples, human population
growth is one of the major causes of species loss and damage to ecos. These are
major issues in ecology but also must be overriding concerns for economists,
political scientists, and political economists. In fact, the tendency in North
America to ignore the impact of money-seeking activities upon nonmarket
relations is a major source of environmental degradation. The recent effort to
“charge” the industrial nations for the damage they have caused to world
environments (as a new form of “debt” from the capitalist world to the rest of
the world) is an example of how we must proceed.27
To many of the more materialistic
peoples of the world, indigenous people have often seemed “backward” or
“simple.” They have seemed ripe for conquest or conversion, or both. The fact
is, however, that the kind of ethical living characteristic of so many
indigenous groups, with its respect for other life forms and its desire for
wholeness of intellect, may be the best answer to the problems faced by all
peoples today.
Yet there are some who challenge
the environmental record of Native Americans, seeking to prove that in spite of
the ideals expressed in indigenous spirituality, Native peoples were actually
large-scale predators responsible some ten thousand years ago for widespread
slaughter and even species annihilation. This viewpoint, shared primarily by a
few anthropologists, overlooks the fact that during the Pleistocene era and
later extinctions occurred in Eurasia and elsewhere, and that Native Americans
cannot be blamed for a global phenomenon. In any case, indigenous Americans
have always belonged to numerous independent political and familial units, each
with its own set of values and behavioral strategies. One can hardly assign
blame to modern Native people as a whole group when the “culprits” (if there
were any) cannot even be identified.
In dealing with the sacred
traditions of original Americans and their relationship to the environment, we
must keep in mind a common-sense fact: not only do different Native groups have
different traditions, stories, ceremonies, living conditions, challenges, and
values, but each family or group has its own unique approach to
“together-living” or “culture.” We must also factor in time, since different
days, years, and epochs have presented different circumstances. In short,
humans do not live by abstract rule alone. They live as well through a unique
set of decisions informed by inspiration, personality, situation, and
opportunity.
Native Americans, like any other
group, are capable of acts that might well conflict with the major thrust of
their sacred traditions. We must, therefore, differentiate between the concrete
behavior of a people and their ideals. But in the case of indigenous Americans,
such a distinction is perhaps less important than in other traditions. Why?
Because Native Americans often lack a single, authoritative book or set of
dogmas that tells them what their “ideals” should be. On the contrary, Native
American sacred traditions are more the result of choices made over and over
again within the parameters of a basic philosophy of life. Thus, we must look
at the ideals expressed in sacred texts (including those conveyed orally), but
also at the choices that people actually make.
Nonetheless, I believe that we
can make the kinds of generalizations that I have, at least as regards those
Native North Americans still following traditional values.
.
. .The Old Ones say
outward is inward to the
heart
and
inward is outward to the center
because
for us
there
are no absolute boundaries
no
borders
no
environments
no
outside
no
inside
no
dualisms
no
single body
no
non-body
We
don’t stop at our eyes
We don’t begin at our skin
We don’t end at our smell
We don’t start at our
sounds. . . .
Some scientists think
they can study a world of
matter separate from
themselves
but there is no
Universe Un-observed
(knowable to us at least)
nothing can be known
without being channeled
through some creature’s
senses,
the unobserved Universe
cannot be discussed
for we, the observers,
being its very description
are its eyes and ears
its very making
is our seeing of it
our
sensing of it. . . .
Perhaps
we are Ideas in the mind
of our
Grandfather-Grandmother
for,
as many nations declare,
the
Universe
by
mental action
was
created
by
thought
was
moved
So
be it well proclaimed!
our boundary is the edge of
the Universe
and
beyond,
to
wherever the Creator’s thoughts
go
surging. . . .28
Native people are not only trying
to clean up uranium tailings, purify polluted water, and mount opposition to
genetically engineered organisms; they are also continuing their spiritual ways
of seeking to purify and support all life by means of ceremonies and prayers.
As LaDuke tells us: “In our communities, Native environmentalists sing
centuries-old songs to renew life, to give thanks for the strawberries, to call
home fish, and to thank Mother Earth for her blessings.”29
ENDNOTES
| 1 |
John Fire, Lame Deer, and Richard Erdoes, Lame
Deer, Seeker of Visions (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1972), 39–40. Back
to Text |
| 2 |
Ruth Bunzel, “Introduction to Zuni
Ceremonialism,” Forty-Seventh Annual Report,
Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1932),
483–486. Back
to Text |
| 3 |
Some writers have attacked Carlos Castaneda;
however, I find that many of the insights in his first four books are quite
valuable. Since he was most assuredly a man of Indigenous American ancestry, I
am willing to quote him without arguing over whether his works are fiction or
nonfiction. Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1974), 284–285. Back
to Text |
| 4 |
Fire, Lame Deer, and Erdoes, Lame Deer,
Seeker of Visions, 265–266; emphasis added. Back
to Text |
| 5 |
Ruby Modesto and Guy Mount, Not For
Innocent Ears: Spiritual Traditions of
a Desert Cahuilla Medicine Woman (Angelus
Oaks, Calif.: Sweetlight Books, 1980), 72. Back
to Text |
| 6 |
Sylvester M. Morey, ed., Can The Red
Man Help The White Man? (New
York: G. Church, 1970), 47. Back
to Text |
| 7 |
Black Hawk, Black Hawk; An
Autobiography (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1955), 106. Back
to Text |
| 8 |
John Gneisenau Neihardt, The Sixth
Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given
to John G. Neihardt, ed. Raymond J.
DeMallie (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 312. Back
to Text |
| 9 |
Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations:
Native Struggles for Land and Life
(Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999), 2.</ | | | | | | |