Indigenous Americans: Spirituality and
Ecos
Jack
D. Forbes
THE
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:
| |
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:
| |
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. . . . |
| |
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:
| |
Native American
teachings describe the relations all around—animals,
fish, trees, and rocks—as our brothers, sisters, uncles,
and
grandpas. . . . |
| |
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:
| |
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:
| |
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:
| |
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,
| |
. . . 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.”
|
| |
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. . . . |
| |
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. . . . |
| |
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:
| |
“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. Back
to Text |
| 12 |
Pete Catches,
Lakota elder, quoted in Fire, Lame Deer, and Erdoes,
Lame Deer, Seeker of
Visions, 137–139. Back
to Text |
| 13 |
Black Elk,
The Sacred Pipe: Black
Elk’s Account of the
Seven Rites of the
Oglala Sioux, rec. and ed.
Joseph Epes Brown (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971),
31–32. Back
to Text |
| 14 |
Luther Standing
Bear, Land of the Spotted
Eagle (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska
Press, 1978), 192–193. Back
to Text |
| 16 |
Jack D. Forbes,
“Kinship is the Basic Principle of Philosophy,”
Gatherings: The En’owkin
Journal of First North
American Peoples VI (Penticton, B.C.:
Theytus Books, 1995), 144–150. Back
to Text |
| 18 |
Miguel
Leon-Portilla, La Filosofia
Nahuatl: Estudiada en
sus Fuentes (Mexico: Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Instituto de
Investigaciones Historicas, 1966), 237–238. My
translation. Back
to Text |
| 20 |
Carlos
Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan:
The Lessons of Don
Juan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972),
69–70; Fire, Lame Deer, and Erdoes, Lame
Deer, 16. Back
to Text |
| 21 |
Jack D. Forbes,
A World Ruled by
Cannibals: The Wetiko
Disease of Aggression,
Violence, and Imperialism
(Davis, Calif.: D-Q University Press, 1979), 85–86.
See also Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and
Other Cannibals (Brooklyn:
Autonomedia, 1992), 145–147. Back
to Text |
| 22 |
Anna Lee
Walters, Talking Indian:
Reflections on Survival and
Writing (Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books,
1992), 19–20. Back
to Text |
| 23 |
See Jack D.
Forbes, “A Right to Life and Shelter,” San
Francisco Chronicle, 28 May 2000, zone
7, 9. Back
to Text |
| 25 |
Debra Harry is
executive director of Indigenous Peoples Council on
Biocolo-nialism, 850 Numana Dam Road, P.O. Box 818,
Wadsworth, NV 89442, USA. Back
to Text |
| 27 |
This is a
proposal made by Third World nations that seeks to
“capitalize” the costs of environmental damage.
Back
to Text |
| 28 |
Jack D. Forbes,
“The Universe Is Our Holy Book,” unpublished poem,
1992. Back
to Text |
| | |
