Lecture 10
Native American Worldview
I. Introduction
A. How does the worldview of Native Americans differ from that of Euro-Americans?
B. The first American religion does not illustrate Western cultural concepts
1. Native Americans are not members of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition
2. Common for many indigenous traditions around the world who didn’t go
through European enlightenment
3. due close association with land many tribal variations
C. What values do they hold in common?
1. Vastly different religious rituals
2. sense of orientation
D. Discussed in contrast with Judeo-Christian to highlight difference
1. all religions are not the same
2. If time, have them fill in western concepts
II. Lack of rigid boundaries—fluidity and interdependence
A. Space (above/below; inner/outer)
1. Heavens and earth connected
a) Spirits who visit
2. Inner spirit and outside “world” of nature connected
a) Importance in healing
3. Importance of place
a) Not all the same
4. West: three-storied Judeo Christian world
B. Beings (human, natural, divine)
1. fluidity between humans, animals, and gods
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2. Native: everything is part of a complicated, ever changing, order
a) Animals become supernatural, men become animals
b) Sacredness of land
c) Communal ownership of land
d) Fluidity of sexes, “third sex” male taking on female roles; less noted
female taking on male
3. Importance of non-human world
a) Rootedness in a specific natural order than can be predicted
4. Ritual connects everything together again
a) Connection of performer and spectator
5. West: spirit and matter; God and man split via sin
a) Animals (and some people) of lower order
b) God the highest
c) Reinforced by science that places human as highest and plant life low
d) Notion of subdue and conquer natural order
e) Private property, separate individual can own something (a dog, or a
black man, owned by a white man because of lesser order)
C. Activities (religious, economic, sexual, social)
1. No separate word for “religion” (or for “art” for that matter)
2. Everything may be imbued with divine
a) Both and culture, not exclusive
b) Christian and traditional activities
3. No separation of religion or tradition from everyday life
a) making baskets—creating the world
b) hunting—paying respect to animals/God
c) language has power
4. recitation of myth not merely symbolic but actual re-creation
a) importance of oral recitation
5. Goals: harmony and balance
6. not like West:
a) this is religion, today is Sunday
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b) gap between sacred and profane
c) separation of church and state
d) privatization of religion
e) Christianity: movable, universal, missionary oriented
III. Cyclical Time
A. Native American cyclical time
1. Perennial reality of the now
a) Ancestors and future children part of the present
b) Nothing is “history” meaning dead and gone
2. Past is as important as future because part of the same circle
3. Where is the past and present and future in a circle?
a) Many languages do not have past and future tenses
b) Importance of myth and ritual: unification of time; space; beings
c) Narratives (myths) link time together
d) Stories in circle rather than linear progression of words written down as
in law
4. Lack of interest in “progress”
B. Western linear time
1. Christian: Adam and Eve; Christ; End of the World
2. Western Enlightenment importance of progress, being forward looking, don’t
look back
a) Scientific: Big Bang theory
3. Lack of memory
4. smaller tradition following liturgical cycle, collapsing of time
IV. Preference for Tradition and Community
A. Needs of society over those of the individual
B. Myth tells of how society is ordered
1. Connected to economic, social life (eg. harvest, puberty)
2. Continuity of economic order, not reform
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C. Society based in oral tradition articulating myth rather than written law
1. rigid “rules” but passed on through community
2. Importance of land, space, physical world
D. Values:
1. Continuity consistency, regularity
2. Balance, symmetry, harmony
3. Interrelatedness, nothing exists in isolation
4. No one owns and everyone ones
a) Who has right to sell land or natural resources?
E. West
1. importance of private property
2. Improvement and efficiency not the highest good
3. Innovation and individual
a) Breaking with tradition or family
V. Conclusion
A. The earliest people in American had worldview radically different from those of the
later settlers
B. Fluidity means even when became Christian carried traditional values and even rituals
C. Native American religion can serve as a challenge to both Christianity and
Enlightenment rationalism (the secular) that has not been very environmentally or
socially “friendly”
D. Native American religion should challenge you to reconsider what you think is “true”
and “natural” and “obvious” about the order and the meaning of the world
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