Native American ethnophilosophy and worldview

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: Despite the diversity among indigenous American cultures—their environments, beliefs, and adaptations—the underlying philosophy of these cultures is a respect for the natural world and their place within it

Around the world and throughout history, indigenous peoples have developed belief systems that shape their lifestyles to their natural environment in order to enhance their survival within it. Such has been the case among the indigenous peoples of North America.

Definitions

The ethnophilosophy, or worldview, of any culture is a description of how that culture explains the structure and workings of the world in which it lives. It is based on experience, observation, and intellectual inquiry. In many cultures, this worldview is relatively distinct from other aspects of its ideology. One of these other aspects that is especially important is religion, which might be defined as the description of a group or individual’s relationship with that world, a behavioral guide that relies to some extent on emotional appeal. Myths are a link between philosophy and religion.

The distinction between worldview and religious influence, however, is much less clear-cut in North American native cultures. This blending has been both a strength and a weakness for the indigenous American peoples since Europeans came to their lands. The extent to which these closely tied phenomena shape the daily lives and activities of indigenous peoples has been unrecognized or disregarded by the dominant, immigrant culture.

Recurrent Themes

As cultures and individuals, most North American natives consider their lives to be constant expressions of their abiding respect for the natural world and their place in it. Although there are many different belief systems and rituals among the groups, there are several recurrent themes that appear across the spectrum of differences. These are the acceptance of visions and dreams as legitimate realities, brotherhood with particular plants or animals, the necessity for maintaining balance in all aspects of life, and the sanctity of the circle. These motifs appear repeatedly in art and decoration, music, dance, and many rituals. Reverent, constant attention to these themes is an integral experience of daily life.

In many Native American cultures, dreams and visions are welcomed, even sought, as sources of wisdom. There are rituals to prepare seekers for a vision experience. Spending a period of time in a sweatlodge is often part of the preparation. Fasting and solitude are also common practices. In some cultures, the use of hallucinogens facilitates the vision experience. Sometimes, though, these experiences are spontaneous. Whatever information is gained is considered reality, though perhaps reality in metaphor. It is wisdom.

Wisdom is always a gift. There are always sacred and unknowable “great mysteries.” Their existence is recognized and appreciated as part of the bond that ties people to life. It is not only foolish but also disrespectful to ask too much about the great mysteries. Although shamans and members of secret religious societies might have more insight than the average tribe member into the ultimate and unknowable, even they are barred, by reverence for its infinite sanctity, from too much direct inquiry: All that they are to know will be revealed to them.

Usually during one of these dream or vision experiences some animal or mythical being communicates with the participant. Its message is shared with the tribe and may become part of the myth system for that tribe. Imagery from the dream or vision may be used later by their artists who make masks or who paint pottery. It may be woven into the pattern of a blanket or basket or may become part of a costume worn during a ceremonial dance.

Native Americans accept their place in the natural world as being a part of creation rather than being separate from it. They share equal status with other parts of creation, both living and nonliving.

Plants, Animals, and Mother Earth

Because of Native Americans’ traditional reliance on the abundance of the land, certain plants and animals have always been accorded special status. Corn, squash, beans, rice, and tobacco were traditional crops. Buffalo, caribou, deer, fish, and whales were common sources of game food. Wolves, eagles, bears, and snakes are important symbols of wisdom and strength. Cedar trees, which provided Indians in the Northwest Coast culture area with material for their homes, boats, clothing, and containers for storage and cooking, are revered in that region. In many indigenous cultures, when a person needs to kill something to use it, he apologizes to it first or explains to it the necessity for its death. Although North American natives’ lives were particularly dependent on these living things, they recognized the worth of all forms of life and took care not to harm them if possible. Nonliving parts of the natural world were also valued.

The concept of Mother Earth is a major theme both in myth and in daily life. All life comes from and is dependent upon Mother Earth. Several groups believe that they emerged as a people from the earth. Some believe that future generations are developing within the mother now and will emerge from the mother as long as humankind exists. Many believe that after death their spirits will return to their source within Mother Earth. Crops emerge from the earth and are nourished by Her. Animals are sustained by the plants that the earth supports. Therefore, the only way to regard Mother Earth is with gratitude and reverence.

Certain mountains or rock formations, caves, or rivers, as well as the ocean, are considered sacred to those who live near them. These sites may be revered because the natives believe that their ancestors originated there or because their ancestors are buried there. It may be that the tribe believes that its future lies there—that the coming generations will need those places for their lives. Therefore, it is the responsibility of those currently living to take care of the site both physically, by not scarring or polluting it and spiritually, by regarding it with respect.

On a somewhat smaller scale, certain gems and minerals have particular symbolic importance. Solid forms may be fashioned into amulets or may be used in rituals; clay and various pigments, for example, are used for ceremonial body paint. Even a plain-looking small stone can carry a prayer if it is handled reverently.

Life in Balance

Balance in the natural world and in individual lives is seen as crucial for survival. In their relationship with the environment, Native Americans see it as their responsibility not to disturb natural balances. They must not take more resources than they need for their survival or take more than the environment can bear to give. They must treat with respect all that is taken from their surroundings.

Balance must also be maintained in relationships within their communities. Political systems have varied widely among groups. In pre-contact days, some North American tribal leaders were monarchs, and their subjects lived within strict caste systems. Other groups enjoyed relative democracy, their governments involving representatives in voting councils. The model for the United States’ government was influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy, which is one of the oldest continuously functioning systems of governance in the world.

Personal lives must be kept in balance by respectful attitudes, ethical behavior, and avoidance of excess in order to maintain physical and mental health. When a person is suffering because he or she is out of balance, a healer or shaman may be able to help find the cause. The sufferer may not even remember a seemingly minor transgression committed several years before, or a child may be suffering because one of his or her parents unknowingly did something before the child was even conceived. Whatever the cause, once the source of the problem is recognized, the healer or shaman performs ceremonies and offers advice to help the sufferer regain the balance necessary for good health.

All creation is bound by a sacred circle, and since the indigenous people live within it, they must take care not to break it by either carelessness or intentionally destructive behavior. The circle expresses itself repeatedly throughout the natural world—in the rounded vault of the sky, in the cycle of the seasons, in the shape of the sun and moon, and in the nests of birds and the webs of spiders. The circular pattern is reiterated in the shape of many tribes’ houses, in the hoops of games, in the choreography of dances, and in the form of religious structures.

While these motifs are prominent in nearly all indigenous cultures of North America, many of the ways in which they are honored might not seem obvious. Factors as basic as the name by which a tribe knows itself and its environment, as major as the education of its children, and as seemingly insignificant as the proper way to move about in the home are all matters related to the philosophy of respect for the worlds among which the various American indigenous cultures live.

Tribal Names and Traditions

Most tribes credit mythical figures or their ancestors with having provided tribal names. Because of the sacred source for these names, tribal membership offers spiritual as well as social identity. Frequently a tribe is named for its location or for some trait of its community. For example, the Pimas’ indigenous name is Akimel O’odham, which means “River People,” and their Papago neighbors, the Tohono O’odham, are the “Desert People.” Many tribes are known in their native tongues simply as “the People.” Among them are the Dine (Navajo) of the American Southwest, the Nimipu (Nez Perce) of eastern Washington state, the Kaigini (Haida) of the Pacific coast, and the Maklaks (Klamath) of the mountainous California-Oregon border region. A few variations on this are Ani-yun-wiya (Cherokee), or “Real People”; Kaigwu (Kiowa), or “Main People”; Anishinabe (Chippewa), “First Men”; and Tsististas (Cheyenne), “Beautiful People.”

In every tribe, Native American childrenare given instruction in the proper way to behave and are introduced to their origins through stories and myths told by parents and relatives or by tribal storytellers. Children are discouraged from asking too many questions. Instead, they are advised over the years to listen to stories several times. As the children grow up in this oral tradition, they come to understand the metaphors and realities that are the bridges connecting their people’s history, philosophy, religion, and traditions. Everything the children learn must be relevant to their lives; it is vital for the physical, spiritual, and social survival of the children individually and for the tribe as a whole. The oral tradition continues to be a sacred responsibility for both the teller and the listener.

Among some tribes, even the way people move about within the group or inside their homes or religious structures is an expression of respect. Children are taught not to cross between the fire and their elders so that they are not deprived of any heat or light. In some tribes, the pattern of movement in the homes is always in a clockwise direction, the way that the sun moves across the sky. Participants in nearly all religious and political meetings gather in a circle.

Sentimentalization Versus Reality

It is important to realize that one should not become carried away with oversentimentalizing the worldviews and practices of Native Americans. (This type of sentimentalizing was prominent in the eighteenth century, with the European concept of the “noble savage.”) Certain tribal hunting techniques, as well as some tribes’ capturing and selling of slaves and cruelty in warfare, attest the side of Indian life that sentimentalists do not consider.

Before they had horses to use in their hunting expeditions, the method that several tribes used to slay buffalo was to herd and stampede them into running off cliffs. Although it was customary for the hunters to apologize to the dying and dead, the number of animals lost was in excess of what their tribes could use, and many carcasses remained at the foot of the cliffs to become carrion.

Taking slaves was a common practice for tribes in many parts of the continent. Often these slaves were captured from other tribes during raids for that purpose. Sometimes non-natives were enslaved, including African Americans taken by the Cherokee. Comanches took Spaniards as slaves. In the Pacific Northwest, a large portion of the Chinook economy was the slave trading that they did up and down the coast. The Ute captured people for other tribes to use for slaves, trading them for horses. Several tribes in the Southeast captured other natives for the English and Spanish to use on their ships and in the Caribbean colonies.

Human sacrifice and cannibalism were not unknown. Most tribes that practiced human sacrifice used prisoners who had been captured in conflicts. Those who were not suitable for slaves or sacrificial purposes, or who would not make good wives, were often tortured before they were killed. The Pawnee sacrificed captured females—or one of their own, if necessary—as part of a ritual called the Morning Star Ceremony to ensure an ample harvest. Most cases of cannibalism involved using the victims’ hearts to gain the enemies’ valor and strength.

The potlatch, the celebration among British Columbian and Pacific Northwest natives that has been seen as a symbol of generosity and a ceremony of sharing the host’s wealth among the guests, was not always an altruistic event. The Kwakiutl, for example, also used it as a political tool to humiliate their enemies and to gain power over them.

Immigrant Philosophy Conflict

Throughout their history with European immigrants, Native Americans have suffered near annihilation—physical, cultural, and spiritual—because of the ethnophilosophical differences between the two groups.

When Europeans began arriving on the shores of North America, they brought with them a philosophy that was radically different from that of the natives they encountered. The newcomers did not see themselves as being an integral part of their natural environment, participants in it who had to obey its laws. They saw themselves as separated from it by their level of civilization—by how far they believed they had risen above the brutality and unpredictability of the natural world and by how well they had managed to exploit its resources. The essential difference in worldview was, and continues to be, a source of conflict that has been disastrous to Native American communities across the continent.

Bibliography

Beck, Peggy V., and Anna L. Walters. The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life. Tsaile, Ariz.: Navajo Community College Press, 1977. Discusses several North American cultures while concentrating on southwestern peoples. Many photographs and maps. Extensive bibliography and film lists.

French, Lawrence. Psychological Change and the American Indian: An Ethnohistorical Analysis. New York: Garland, 1987. Academic, theoretical approach. Well organized and well documented. Focuses on educational policies with discussion of pre- and post-contact attitudes among Cherokee, Athapaskan/Apache, and Plains Sioux.

Highwater, Jamake. The Primal Mind. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Philosophy in elegant, simple language. The author’s views are based on academic studies and on life experience in both Blackfeet (Blood) and non-native cultures. Extensive bibliography.

Inter Press Service, comp. Story Earth: Native Voices on the Environment. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993. Essays by the world’s indigenous peoples, including American Indians, compiled by a global newswire. Introduction by the prime minister of Norway. Interesting non-American editorial perspectives.

McLuhan, T. C., comp. Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971. Native Americans’ quotations from the last three hundred years. Many photographs. Insightful and visually beautiful. Well documented; includes suggested readings.

Nerburn, Kent, and Louise Mengelkoch, eds. Native American Wisdom. San Rafael, Calif.: New World Library, 1991. Short quotes from numerous Native Americans, past and pres-ent, discussing ways that philosophical concepts are expressed in daily life.

Ridington, Robin. Trail to Heaven: Knowledge and Narrative in a Northern Native Community. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988. Anthropological study of the philosophy, social life, and customs of the Beaver Indians in British Columbia. Some photographs and a long reference list.

Suzuki, David, and Peter Knudtson. Wisdom of the Elders: Honoring Sacred Native Visions of Nature. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Views of indigenous peoples from around the world, including North America. Scholarly but readable. Several epigraphs by scientists from many disciplines, theologians, and social scientists. Romanticized non-native assumptions are examined. Well documented.

Vecsey, Christopher. Imagine Ourselves Richly: Mythic Narratives of North American Indians. New York: Crossroad, 1988. A broad-ranging anthology. The introduction includes academic discussion of sources and functions of myths in general and of their value to Native Americans specifically.

Wall, Steve, and Harvey Arden. Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders. Hillsboro, Oreg.: Beyond Words, 1990. Long quotations from interviews with several American Indians. Not an academic work but informative and insightful. Moving text and photographs.