Native
American Spiritulism
Native
American Spiritulism - Presentation Transcript
1. Please
press page down to advance through the presentation—Thank You
2. Native
American Spirituality
3. 18th and
19th CenturyEuro-Americans and Native American Spirituality
4. “The
religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race
will ever understand.”
--The Soul of
the Indian, Eastman written in 1901
5. Pequot
Spirituality is not religion to American Natives.
Religion is
not a Native concept; it is a non Native word, with implications of things that
often end badly, like Holy wars in the name of individuals God and so on.
Native people
do not ask what religion another Native is, because they already know the
answer.
To Native
people, spirituality is about
the Creator,
period!
--statement
and photo
Walking Fox
Shechaim Ohjieshan
of the
Mohiigan
People.
6. The
opening quote by Eastman describes the inability of Euro-American settlers to
understand Native American spirituality. In his book, The Soul of the Indian
written in 1901, Eastman explains that the deeply personal nature the Native
American’s spirituality held for him as being so strong that he didn’t always
freely speak of it. Further, the racial and religious prejudice of the outsider
rendered them unable to understand. In addition, by the time anyone attempted
to understand and write about it, the original beliefs and philosophy of the
Native American were already undergoing rapid disintegration from Euro-American
influence.
The quote by
Sachem Walking Fox is characteristic of many indigenous peoples of North
America, and many will deny that their people have ever truly engaged in
“religion” as defined by the early Euro-American settlers. There aren’t
Euro-American words to describe the Native American belief. Although many
Native American’s adopted the “religious” practices of Euro-Americans, they
were able to incorporate their belief in their personal prayers to the
“Creator” or “Great Spirit” and most did not abandon their ceremonial
traditions.
“
7. The
problem is there has always been a tendency of outsiders to confuse “religion”
with the living spirituality and ceremony of the Native American.
For example,
ancient ceremonial rituals like the Green Corn Ceremony, the Snake Dance,
kachinas (ancestral spirits of the Pueblo peoples, believed to reside in the
with them for part of each year), the Sun Dance, sweat-lodge ceremonies, and
the sacred pipe are not specifically “religious” practices of various tribes,
but are seen by the Native American as ceremony symbolic of their day-to-day
existence on the Earth, and all of their day-to-day practices are seen as
spiritual and ceremonial. There is no separation.
In contrast
to the daily spiritual living and ceremony of the Native was, and is still
today, the early Euro-American practice of church on Sunday and for the most
part, their day to day life tasks were not closely associated with their
“religion” or “spiritual” practices.
“
8. Native
American Spiritual Healing
9. The
concept of the close tie of the Native American spirituality and ceremony to
day-to-day living reveals also the close tie between their spirituality and
their natural medicines and healing practices.
The Native
American’s reliance and preservation of their natural surroundings could be
their greatest strength and was directly responsible for their success as a
nation. For this success they showed their thankfulness for all living and
non-living things.
“The Great
Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She nourishes us: that which
we put into the ground she returns to us, and healing plants she gives us
likewise.”
–Big Thunder
of Wabnakis tribe
10. Early
English settlers were impressed with the Native American physique and lack of
disease. The early colonists were weak and arrived during the cold months of
winter and were not prepared to face the long harsh winters of the new world.
They took note and before long, adopted many of the Native uses of plants as
medicine. Much was written about the healing powers of these medicines in
letters back to Europe and by the 18th century nearly 70% of European
plant-drugs in apothecaries were imported from either the Far East or the
Americas.
Although the
Euro-Americans adopted the medicines of the Native American’s as their own,
they were lacking the mind, body and spirit philosophy of the Natives that even
current science of the 20th century has proven can have a large impact on
healing. Nor did the Euro’s replenish the Earth with what they took from her.
Eventually
the diseases brought over by the newcomers began to take hold of the Native
American’s health, introducing new and unknown illnesses that the Natives had
never seen and their medicines were powerless against.
11. The
Influence of Native American Community
12. Native
American traditions were community based and community specific, and these
practices handed down generation to generation build upon the experiences of
that particular community. If taken outside of the context of that particular
community they would have no meaning. This idea helps to illustrate the reason
why when non-native Americans or people from other cultures have tried to
replicate Native American ceremony it was seen as a threat to the community to
which those practices belong.
The idea of
community reflected in the stories, songs and ceremony are based on life within
that community for the benefit of the community as a whole and violations of
sacred practice or belief are seen as a threat to the whole community not just
the individual. This was also true of sickness and disease, when one member was
ill, the entire community would perform healing ceremonies.
13. The
Euro-Americans in more developed colonial areas saw the Native American
community healing rituals with their songs, chants, dances and the hypnosis
some of these rituals seem to invoke as barbaric and heathen. More and more a
kind of contemptuous disdain for the Natives developed in these areas.
Missionaries
were coming in to “save” the Natives from there heathenism. Their influence had
a strong impact on the spiritual culture and traditional ways of the Native
American.
Unlike
popular belief of many non-natives, the Native Americans did not simply replace
one faith with another, nor did they fake it to please the newcomers.
According to
Vine Deloria, Jr. in his book God Is Red native beliefs and rituals became
intermixed with Christian elements. This is referred to as “religious
syncretism—a creative combination of the elements of different religious
traditions yielding an entirely new religious system capable of commanding
broad popular loyalties”.
14. Foolishly
the colonists saw who looked down on the Natives as being somehow inferior
reverted back to the ways of English medicine and began to import the violent
remedies of the English into the New World rather than use the plants available
to them. This practice was reinforced when they saw that the Natives herbal
remedies were powerless against the new diseases the newcomers introduced.
Fortunately,
in the frontier lands of the New World, homesteaders had to rely on what the
Earth could provide in the way of plant medicines and they relied on the
Indians to teach them in their use. In this way, Native American’s had great
influence on the use of plants as medicine that they passed on to the newcomers
and many of those remedies are known and used today.
15. The
Ginseng “Gold Rush”
16. During
the mid 18th century, missionaries discovered the heal-all powers or panacea of
Ginseng used by the Chinese for 1000’s of years. High dollars were paid for the
perfect root and the hunt was on. Mean while another missionary working with
the Native North Americans in French Canada discovered that the Natives were
using another version of ginseng (Panax) found locally.
Soon the word
was out of the huge sums of money the French were making on shipping loads of
the ginseng root to China and the rush was on. Frontiersmen and Natives in
North America became ‘’sang-diggers’ of the North American outback. They
harvested ginseng where ever they could find it with little regard to ritual,
giving thanks or preservation of the Earth.
17. Sacred
Space
18. Another
clearly misunderstood concept of Native American spirituality is their notion
of “spatiality” referring to their ceremonial life and existence deeply rooted
in space and place. An example is the Sky-Earth division where ceremonials are
structured around North and South. The structure for a Green Corn Ceremony or
the design of a sweat lodge, or the direction one turns in a pipe ceremony all
are representative of the spiritual relationship of a people within the spatial
world around them.
This
important concept is also evident in the Native American belief that certain
places are known to a particular tribe as powerfully spiritual. For most Native
American communities, there are one or more such places that they have long
identified as powerful like the Black Hills for the Sioux Nation, Blue Lake for
Taos Pueblo, Mount Graham for the San Carlos Apaches and the mountains that
comprise the territorial boundaries of any pueblo.
19. To the
Native American these places are considered alive and their words loosely
translated to English would be Sacred Mystery or Sacred Power. The Great Spirit
is typically experienced as a great unknown but then reveals itself as a space
or place, as in the Mystery Above or Below or the Mystery or Powers of the Four
Directions.
All of the
cosmos and the Earth and the sky are alive and filled with spirit power,
including each human being and this is reflected as the interrelationship of
all creation. All the two legged, four legged, winged animals and fish and
every other living thing and non living thing like rocks and trees and
mountains are alive and interrelated.
This idea
which is expressed eloquently in the poetry, songs and stories of many tribes
is perhaps one of the greatest contributions the Native American people have
made to the spiritual sciences of the modern world.
Many
herbalists today will tell you that the plants talk to them of their healing
power and when to use them for a particular client. This in itself is powerful
medicine and the good herbalist will know enough to listen to what the plants
have to say.
20. Conflict
21.
Throughout history, many conflicts between peoples center on “religious”
differences and misunderstandings. Euro-American misunderstanding of the Native
American culture and their spiritualism and ceremonial traditions eventually
led to conflict. Learning more about Native American spiritualism and
ceremonial tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries makes it easier to
understand why those conflicts arose.
Some of the
reasons for these conflicts were:
o Issues of
translation
o Differences
in religious practice and belief
o
Misunderstanding of the mind-body-spirit healing practices
o Influence
of missionaries and Euro-Americans on the Native American communities and their
spiritual tradition and ceremony
o
Introduction of disease brought over from the Old World
o Ravaging of
Earths riches (plants, buffalo, natural beauty)
o Desecration
of sacred grounds
22. For many,
many years Native Americans endured racial prejudice, loss of life, loss of
their sacred grounds and oppression of their spirituality and ceremony. Whole
communities were abolished and many were forced from their homelands and placed
on reservations. Their cultural ways were looked upon as oddities and they
suffered great damage to their proud heritage.
What is not
always recognized is that Euro-Americans suffered greatly from these conflicts
as well, by their own hands.
Euro-American’s
were plagued with iatrogenic disease (disease caused by medical treatment)
caused by their harmful apothecary brought over from Europe.
Their
inability to understand and trust the medicine of the Native American caused
them to miss the opportunity for advancement in plant based medicine.
Much could
have been learned about the mind-body-spirit connection and they didn’t learn
the importance of sustaining their environment a lesson we are still trying to
learn today.
23.
Conclusion
Thankfully,
the wars that ensued brought on by all these tensions did not completely wipe
away the knowledge passed on between the two cultures.
“Religious”
influence of the Euro-Americans blended with the beliefs and traditions of the
Native American culture. Similarity between the Euro-American “religion” and
Native American spirituality and ceremony of some communities help to confirm
the presence of a higher power looking over both peoples.
The efforts
of Native Americans to bring back what was lost of their culture and their
traditional spiritual ways has done much for the advancement of the
Euro-American descendent understanding of environmentalism.
The songs,
story-telling, ceremony, poetic literature, artwork and craftsmanship of the
Native American have enriched the lives of all.
24. A Final
Word
The lessons
learned from both the sharing and the conflicts of these two cultures shapes
our world today. Let’s hope we can reflect on the blending of our cultures and
the conflicts that tore our cultures apart and become better stewards. We owe
it to the Earth we live upon and the riches she bestows upon us.
As students
of Western Clinical Herbalism this section of learning about the Native
American Culture should have a profound impact on how we learn to heal,
mind-body-spirit.
25.
References
Heyrman,
Christine Leigh. “Native American Religion in Early America.” Divining America,
TeacherServe®. National Humanities Center. November 7, 2009. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/natrel.
htm
No comments:
Post a Comment