Dear Ones,
As I wrote before, there is no word for religion in traditional First American vocabularies. This ethnic group reflects the first spirituality in the United States. Their members never fought in the name of religion. In later years their youths served in most American wars as citizens of the United States, as did American Africans.
American Indian spirituality is different from religion that has dogma as its foundation, meaning enforced religious man-made laws. This fact became
People no longer call European cultures tribes, as they once were. There are more than 550 nations within the United States nation. These traditionalists speaking their own language and living on the last remnants of their sacred land, are now referred to as Native Nations out of respect for the original people. As much as fundamentalists tried, no one could take from traditionalists their original belief system amd languages, what they are now teaching their offspring. They never accepted any foreign religion.
State and church historically worked in cahoots with one another, with intentional extermination through genocide. Native Nations are around two percent in U.S. population surveys. Regarding their wisdom and way of life, here is a passage from the book, Visions of Wisdom that I wrote with sacred Sun Dance leader, Mickey Old Coyote of the Apsaalooka Nation–at his request.
"We are one with Earth. We belong to Earth, not the Earth to us. Those who help Earth help themselves and others as well. We comprehend a superior power who has no gender. Our down-to-Earth spirituality is neither mystical nor lofty. It is practical. We do not elude to grandeur or pretension. We see honest truth through observing nature.
We make peace with that powerful force stronger than we are. It is the great voice in the thunder and the four sacred winds–First Maker. All these elements–Earth, fire, water and are–are life-giving. We communicate with nature for inspiration and all our needs for survival, nourishment and hope. We proclaim no place called hell. Neither is it devil-driven. We are not born in sin, a concept that has no meaning in our culture–what "the Black Robes brought to our land.
Traditionalists have no man-made cathedrals filled with stolen gold of the Americas. We look up at the lodge-pole pines, a spiral to the sky. We need no edifice other than the mountains and plains of our sacred lands. There is no date of the beginning of our spirituality. It is timeless. Traditionalists make no claims or controversial dogma portrayed as false truths.
First Nations never had reason to break into factions. Yet, a confused belief has been enforced on us who have no animosities among hundreds of First Nations. We base our culture on ancient philosophical beliefs, devoid of gods born of virgins and rising again, what defies nature. Mythology is not part of our ancestral history. Our stories are teaching methods for our young to learn about life and how to deal amiably with others.
Our belief system adheres to nature that progresses with the greatest regularity based on insight and ancient, enlightened knowledge. Nature offers beauty, optimism and a good feeling toward a bright future. Nature guides us to life-sustaining methods of survival and nourishment that the unelected Bureau of Indian Affairs has tried to squelch ever since its beginning. By living intimately close to nature we deplore man-made devastation of the only planet we know.
Our value system was ripped apart by B.I.A schools, what missionaries fought over as they used government take-over of our funds–stolen monies for foreign schools in the East, with some students running away on foot and returning to their homes on reservations, are last sacred lands. Churches that are not taxed also took away our land for their buildings against our wishes, as students' braids were cut off along with other abuses they had to endure, such as not allowing them to speak in their own tongues to one another. Some died from resisting religious bigotry with these early schools their secret burial grounds.
Traditionalists inherently are conservationists, naturalists and ecologists deeply revering Earth and all its wonders, as many of the young people volunteer for fires on westerns lands and were builders of modern day skyscrapers. If our culture had been free to follow our own value system, we would not have problems forced on us today, such as welfare, what we never needed until our rights were taken from us. Indian spirituality that never died needs not be reborn. It survives now stronger than ever."
In the voice of Chief Plenty Coups in 1912,
"Their wise ones said we might have their religion, but . . . we found there were too many kinds of religion among white men and scarcely any two agreed which was the right one to learn. This bothered us a good deal [since they] did not take religion any more seriously than [their] laws . . . [only taking advantage of them] when dealing with strangers. These are not our ways. We have never been able to understand white man, who fools nobody but himself."
Mame
www.macdonaldsward.com
helenesmith1.blogspot.com
Author tweets for international
peace and peace of mind
