Page 45 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1346 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Southwest Puebloan peoples stress processes of nur- can peoples largely derived from the dominance of the
turing rain and corn-growth in communitarian ethics and Bible in European worldviews as the singular, literate rev-
ritual cycles that connect with ancestral histories. South- elation in which all of world history was revealed.Thus,
eastern native peoples continue ancient ceremonies of when unknown peoples were encountered they were
the first corn of the season, the Green Corn, at which explained by locating them within the Bible.
they light the new fire of the community as a cosmolog- Gradually, the significance of the encounters and the
ical act revivifying creation. striking differences of native peoples caused Europeans
Northern sub-Artic and Artic peoples produced elab- to rethink their own identities and to reflect on their own
orate technologies (e.g., seal hunting, snowshoes, tobog- historical past. The European Enlightenment and scien-
gan, igloo) developed for survival in that harsh cold cli- tific worldview from the eighteenth century gave rise to
mate as well as intense shamanistic healing practices. A ethnographic analyses of the societies and religious activ-
variety of terms are used to refer to all of these peoples ities of distinct native peoples. Influenced by nineteenth-
in an effort to suggest shared similarities, such as Amer- and early-twentieth-century anthropology, the historical
ican Indian, First Peoples, and First Nations. The most studies of Native American societies from this period
appropriate terms that honor their differences are those often presented a single informant’s remembered culture
used by the peoples themselves, e.g., Anishinabe (Ojib- as normative and timeless for that whole society. These
way), Lakota (Sioux),Yup’ik (Eskimo), Muskogee (Creek), idealized perspectives tended to freeze Native American
and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). lifeways as unchanging over time.
Ethnohistorical studies have critiqued these static in-
Lifeway as the Context of terpretations by simply presenting the changing descrip-
Native American History tions of native peoples within written Euro-American
The term “religion” suggests that the sacred can be sepa- historical records themselves. These academic investiga-
rated from ordinary or profane life. However, among tions are significant, but they are strikingly different from
Native American peoples the sacred, the appearance of native modes of historical remembrance. In fact, many
the extraordinary, and the most meaningful values of life researchers manifest an ahistorical bias that does not
are inextricably intertwined with the pragmatic concerns allow them to understand the deep historical visions em-
of daily existence. bedded in Native American lifeways. Some of these
Thus, the ordinary pursuit of sustenance, the making native modes of historicity are consciously articulated
of useful objects, as well as political decision-making may while others are more performative and symbolic. Often
be charged with the presence and power of that which these native modes of remembering and transmitting the
moves the cosmos.The term “lifeway” indicates this close deeper meanings of their cultures resisted the historical
connection of the spiritual awareness of cosmological impositions of dominant societies.
forces as the key to understanding the meaning of both
individual lives and larger societies. History Among Native
American Religions
From Denial to
Ethnography 1. From Native American perspectives the question
Early European studies of Native American societies from “What ways of knowing history are embedded in
the late-fifteenth-century encounter period often reported Native American religions?” generates strikingly dif-
that historical consciousness and religion did not exist ferent responses. (For examples, see Mihesuah, Nabo-
among these peoples. This rejection of religion and sys- kov, and Thornton in Further Reading.) While not
tematic remembrance of the past among Native Ameri- exhaustive, these are some considerations for under-