Page 48 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

native american religions 1349

The Jemez Pueblo historian Joe Sando observed that: For example, the Midewiwin ceremony of the Anishin-
abe peoples of the Great Lakes region transmitted narra-
If we accept Native North American oral history...then
tives of these tribes’ origin-migration. Named geograph-
we can start with the ancient people who have been in
ical locations not only indicate where the ceremony had
North America for many thousands of years and still
allow for European and Mediterranean colonists to been performed but they are also honored as significant
strengthen or boost the developing culture.This appears stopping places of sacred, spirit beings (Manitou). In
to be what indigenous people have been saying in their effect the ceremony of Midewiwin validated the migration
oral history. But later Europeans with their “proof posi- and formation of this Great Lakes people by appealing to
tive” and “show me” attitudes have prevailed, and remain the ancient spiritual animal masters. Midewiwin has
largely unwilling to consider, much less confirm, native been described as an “extinguished” ceremony in some
creation accounts (Sando 1982, 2). academic works, but native practitioners have reasserted
Sando claims a literalist interpretation for myth based the contemporary survival and relevance of this ceremo-
on the living presence of his people in their ancestral nial complex.While not all Anishinabe religiosity can be
Pueblo homes. Acceptance of the historicity of myths is collapsed into Midewiwin, the revitalization of this cere-
a major challenge for historians, but it also opens the mony in the contemporary period accentuates an empha-
possibility for “seeing with a native eye” the historical sis in native religious understanding that formative cos-
facts embedded in these stories (Capps 1976, 9). mological experiences endure into the present and
identify living people as much as ancestors, according to
The Oral Native Voice Wub-e-ke-niew in We Have the Right to Exist.
The second point draws attention to the need for native
voice in reconstructing Native American religious his-
tory. Deep authenticity and fragility of native voice are Cosmological
found in the oral narratives that transmit the creation Narrative and Song
stories, legends, and tales of the people. Actual native The third point draws attention to the interactions of rit-
voice, layering of stories within stories, and the immedi- uals, myths, sacred objects, songs, and seminal places
acy and intimacy of oral narratives are crucial correctives and ideas as having the status of “persons” in Native
to a view of native history that abhors subjective inter- American religions.While this complex of relations is dif-
pretation, ambiguity of outcome, and experiential voice ferently expressed among particular peoples, one striking
as authoritative. example comes from the Gitskan peoples of central
When oral stories are labeled myths it accentuates British Columbia.
their sacred, revelatory character, but that term may also
situate the stories as timeless, unchanging, and perma- Each Gitksan house is the proud heir and owner of an
adáox. This is a body of orally transmitted songs and sto-
nently past. When native peoples narrate stories of ori-
ries that act as the house’s sacred archives and as its living,
gins they may or may not be evaluated according to their
millennia-long memory of important events of the past.
conformity to traditional versions. Often narrations are
This irreplaceable verbal repository of knowledge consists
accompanied by rituals that emphasize the living, present
in part of sacred songs believed to have arisen literally
character of the beings, places, and events named.Thus,
from the breaths of the ancestors. Far more than musical
among a number of native nations there are animal-
representations of history, these songs serve as vital time-
addressing, place-naming, ethic-declaiming narratives traversing vehicles.They can transport members across the
that accompany major rituals.These should not be seen immense reaches of space and time into the dim mythic
as either simply describing past events or as objectively past of Gitskan creation by the very quality of their music
categorizing land, animals, or laws. and the emotions they convey (Wa and Delgam 1987, 7).