native american worldview

[sabelmouse]

i read this lovely discription of the native american world view yesterday in the book Animal Dreams by B. Kingsolver, and it encapsulates my own.

"so you make this deal with the gods. you do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? and nothing bad will ever happen. right.

no it's not like that. it has to do with keeping things in balance. it's like the spirits have made a deal with us.
we are on our own. the spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we are saying: we know how nice you are being. we appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. sorry if we messed up anything. you've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.

the way they tell it to us anglos, god put the earth here fot us to use, westward ho.

i remember loyd one time saying he'd die for the land. i thought he'd meant patrionism. i'd had no idea.
to people who think of themselves as god's houseguests , american enterprise must seem arrogant beyond believe. or stupid. a nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it."

they are in an area where heavy mining is destroying the mountains and the river upon wich the fruit orchards depend is being poisened.

i just thought that that was such a good discription of the differences of seeing the world, not just in the US, but the west generally.

[Nephtys80]

Hmz, I don't agree with the quote. There might be a difference in worldview, but it does not stem from the Bible in the case of Christianity: Genesis quite explicitly states that humans have stewardship of the earth, Eden was created for humans "to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2.15) - and the word for ‘work’ is often translated ‘serve’, which takes it a step further: humans have been tasked with not only taking care of creation, but serving it. Whether it is applied by Christians or anyone else is a whole other matter, but if you look purely at teachings it's not Native Americans = good, Christians = bad.

[sabelmouse]

i did not say it comes from the bible but is used that way. i also said that i could not think of a better title and this is not meant to be against christians but a certain kind of interpretation.

[Nephtys80]

Yeah, I misread it because of the title, the quote indeed does not mention Christianity, it just talks about 'anglos'.

However, my point would still be that it has nothing to do with Christianity at all, so as a title for the thread I think it is extremely misplaced. Maybe change it to "the West" then, though that's also a fairly murky categorisation.

[sabelmouse]

maybe white culture? christianity however is the religion that has informed most of western culture for hundreds and thausends of years, and america is from what i can tell strongly influenced by a christian ethic. ocviousle not all christians are alike, but there do seem to be a fair amount that think the world was made for our use.

[Robin Goodfellow]

Which Native American cultures? Are we talking Sioux, Ojibwa, Apache, Nez Pierce, Inuit? I'm not very familiar with Native American cultures, but I know that they are all really different so I was wondering which culture it was that you were referring to.

[sabelmouse]

the ones in the book are navajo? i just finished the book and brought it back to the library.
it's set in the arizona desert.
although that is the impression i have got whenever i read or hear something about native american culture.

[Startled Panda]

I have read this book to. I adore BK. It is a lovely description of a view of live so radically different from that of western civilization.