From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Newsgroups: alt.native
Subject: Re: Environment and native issues
Date: 27 Aug 92 21:03:30 GMT

An attempt at initiating a reconciliation of apparent opposites:

I just submitted a couple of articles which, I've realized upon re-reading,
were fairly long and rambling, and I wanted to just make an attempt to
summarize what I was trying to say, and to demonstrate its relevance to
our main topic of the lives and cultures of indigenous peoples.

The dispute between Peshewegunzh and Alan McGowen appears to me to be at
least partially based on the use of stereotypes and over-generalizations.
It seems to rely on assumptions that there is a choice to be made between
understanding the world scientifically or by means of spiritual conscious-
ness.  It equates Christianity, even the kind adhered to by descendants
of the original natives of what has become North America, with the worst
examples of religious fundamentalism which stakes out a position antago-
nistic to the principles of scientific discovery when those discoveries
are in conflict with a literalistic reading of Christian scripture.

My main aim in my previous articles was to ask what is meant by "Great
Spirit" as it was originally understood by North American Native people.
Whatever that meaning, to what extent has it become colored by contact
with the ideas brought by Christian missionaries and institutionalized
Christianity?  Has there in fact been an evolution of understanding of
deity among these people which has not done violence to their earlier
spiritual traditions?  In what ways does the understanding which is a
blend of Native spirituality and Christianity differ from pre-contact
Native spirituality and modern-day mainstream Christianity?  (I realize
this last question may be almost meaningless, since there is really no
such thing as "Native spirituality," or "modern mainstream Christianity,"
because there are/were so many forms of each, but I would think something
meaningful could be said about a comparison between elements of pre-contact
understandings of self and world and those derived from Christian teachings.

My purpose in quoting R.D. Laing was to try to point out that there are
ways of understanding what some call "God" which are very different from
what those in the Judeo-Christian tradition usually associate with this
word.  I find myself wondering whether Native spirituality is based more
on an experiential understanding of deity than on codified belief, and if
the connection of Great Spirit and the natural world is possibly due to
a greater understanding of how the connectedness of all things in the
natural world partakes of what we in the Western tradition might call
"divinity," and whether this Native spirituality might, to a much greater
extent than mainstream Christianity, understand the connectedness between
this natural divinity and what could be called "divine" within ourselves,
putting it more in the mystical tradition of something like Christian
Gnosticism.

It appears to me that many of us who have grown up learning scientific
principles feel a necessity to choose between the nominal religiosity of
whatever religion we learn as children and the rigorous disciplines of
learning through investigation and experimentation and the careful appli-
cation of logic and debate which we learn in the process of scientific
training.  And we may come to feel that we can either just subscribe to
a set of unexaminable religious teachings, in which we can believe or
not believe, or we can accept a way of approaching life and our own
existence which is free of dogma and which does not teach anything
except that which can be substantiated and demonstrated in repeatable
ways.

I want to submit that this dichotomy may be a false one.  I want to claim
both that there may be a way of approaching something we might call (for
lack of a better term) "spiritual reality," and that there are elements
of dogma in the presentation of even the best of our modern science which
we who, in effect, worship its methods and its conclusions would all do
well to learn to discern and to separate out from what is valuable and
real and sound in our science.  I wonder whether American Indian religious
thought and practice, even as influenced by Christianity, might be able to
help us to reconcile this apparent division within ourselves (this last
phrase is intentionally ambiguous, since I think this division is apparent
on many levels - on the personal as well as on the collective/societal.

If the choice is between a kind of investigation that not only allows, but
actively encourages our participation and something that requires rigid
adherance to a set of beliefs and practices, for most of us, it's really
not much of a choice.  And it's quite understandable why, especially among
the "better educated," there is so little interest or participation in
organized forms of religious practice, unless it be "for the sake of our
children," whom we may feel should be exposed to some kind of moral
influence.

Can we say the same of Native people?  Is this same trend of abandoning
religious tradition as a function of education observable among indigenous
people as well?  I personally don't know the statistics.  In any case, I
only want to point out that it may be due to many of us being familiar
mainly with what might be called "degenerate" forms of spirituality that
we identify it with such opposition to what we can learn from scientific
endeavor, and that it's really not a fair comparison.  What I find en-
couraging in what I read of the articles of Peshewegunzh (who I sincerely
hope has not been seriously affected by the recent hurricane conditions
around Miami) is that he holds out to us a certain hope:

| Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 23:27:20 GMT
|
| I think perhaps that it might be time for European America to
| relearn the particular spiritual values that might be shared from
| Indians, with our unique experiences. Perhaps this message was
| given to us for safekeeping for when the Europeans' children would
| forget what it really meant.

I agree with Alan when he says:

| Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 21:17:14 GMT
|
| On the contrary it is from the truly indigenous, nature-repecting
| religions that the west is more likely to gain revitalization of
| its spiritual values.

but I wonder if it is not possible that at least some indigenous people
have managed to gain an understanding of Christian thought that is even
more true to its original spirit than many of those who have learned a
more European form can easily appreciate.  Perhaps the respect for the
natural world is not quite as contrary to the real precepts of Jesus as
it is to the distortions brought about by the process of his teachings
being so heavily filtered through so many layers of Western philosophy
and desire for an easy way to control and subjugate the masses and to
make them compliant, and through layers of prejudice and superstition
and all kinds of misunderstanding.  Most of us in the West are unfamiliar
with the mystical tradition which I feel forms the core of the essential
spirit of all the world's major religious traditions.  Perhaps it's just
my imagination, but I sometimes wonder whether from the world community
of indigenous peoples might come a sense of ourselves and our world that
has the power to help us rediscover that mystical tradition and its
importance in understanding the meaning of the symbols and the origins
of what have become religious systems.

In any case, I feel it is these systems and the institutions which promote
them that, if anything, are in conflict with the best science has to
offer.  Real spirituality (as I define it) can say nothing to science
about the explanations of specific mechanism which it has discovered, and
science must remain silent concerning the purpose (or lack thereof) of
what it studies, or the ultimate non-material causes which might have
brought it about, unless it can find a way to incorporate into itself
elements of subjectivity which it presently eschews with a real passion.

As to specific questions, such as that of the origin of life on this
planet from "inorganic" matter, which would appear to be answerable either
as the result of adaptation over countless generations to environmental
pressures involving random genetic variations or as the act of a divine
creator which/who we can think of in anthromorphic terms, I think we may
have before us another "false dichotomy."  Perhaps it is only because of
the limitations of our imaginations, and our human tendencies to organize
ourselves into "us" and "them" armed camps that we feel the necessity to
do battle over matters involving such apparent irreconcilable differences.
Largely due to the limitations science, as it has evolved to reach its
present form, imposes upon its own practitioners, it cannot ever deal with,
let alone answer, such questions of purpose.  Scientists are very cagey in
dealing with questions concerning ultimates and origins, despite continued
interest, as expressed in such quantifyable commodities such as research
funding.

My own feeling tends to be that there is undeniably some force at work in
running directly counter to the law of thermodynamics ("entropy") which
says that things tend toward increasing states of randomness (the law is
actually phrased much more precisely, I'm sure, but I think that's the
general essence).  We should not expect to find more and more complex
organisms developing spontaneously, no matter how staunchly we might
subscribe to the principle of evolution, which itself seems fairly un-
deniable.  Why need we oppose the principles of a creative sustaining
force with those of development via the mechanism of biological evolution?
Once you subscribe to the idea of evolution you no longer need bother
about "creative forces," you say?  The Great Spirit isn't constrained to
operate by principles observable by our scientific mechanisms?  I tend
not to put much stock in either statement.  Isn't there some way to be
good scientists and yet to acknowledge a spiritual dimension to our
existence?  Might not our world desperately need people who acknowledge
both and who can resolve those apparent oppositions within themselves?

Peace.

Gary
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst
Newsgroups: alt.native