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Fri 10 Mar, 2006 02:37 pm
In speaking of "harmony"as a value system, as opposed to western thought, ie "The virtues of greed", I tend to refer to "American Indian Attitudes of Harmony", but (This is my question) How accurate are those stereotypes...Am I making assumptions. One American Indian pointed out that Indians could hunt without worrying about "over-harvesting". He also indicated that this stereotype was offensive. Then I posted this question to an American Indian discussion forum and it was deleted, either because it offended a stereotype, or because it was off topic, or because the administrator was an idiot (as in "Hey, what's that got to do with feathers and wolf skulls?".
Any guidance or book/website references would be appreciated.
........
I'll give a web-site quote, then ask a question.
This is from an educational curriculum document entitled "AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY,CULTURE AND LANGUAGE
Curriculum Framework
HARMONY & BALANCE
...........
recognizing the American Indian belief in the interrelatedness and
connectedness to/with all living things.
realizing the role of elders in preserving and teaching the beliefs and values.
understanding that the concept of harmony and balance exists in many aspects
of life - for example: science, health, economics, family life, and social issues.
describing the ways in which "Western Civilization" interrupted and disrupted
the process of harmony and balance for American Indians.
.....................
This article says "the American Indian belief in the"..... In other words, it implies that the concepts of "harmony and balance" are fairly universal to Native Americans as a group. Is that fairly true?? Or does that belief system represent specific groups. If so, which groups?
To frame the context, imagine that I am writing a paper on "harmony and balance" or something to compare with an even better title...namely "The History of Greed".
Barry Landis
I have a children's book that is just the text of a speech a famous chief made about this exact subject... I can't remember enough about it to get a hook, though, will go look at my bookshelves and see what I can come up with...
There we go... "Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A messgae from Chief Seattle" illustrated by Susan Jeffers.
Found the speech here:
http://www.museumonline.at/1999/schools/classic/brg10/amerika/htmle/rededesh%C3%A4uptlingseattlee.htm
Quote:My words are like stars - they never fall
The Great Chief in Washington sends news that he wishes to sell our land.
But we will think about his offer because we know - if we don't sell - that white men will come with guns and take our land. How can you buy or sell the heavens? - or the warmth of this earth? This idea is strange. When we don't own the freshness of the air or the sparkling of the water - how can you buy it from us?
Every part of this earth is holy for my people, every shining pine needle, every sandy beach. Every fog in the dark woods, every clearing. Each buzzing insect is holy in the thoughts and experience of my people. The sap which rises in the trees carries the memory of the white man.
We are a part of this earth and it is a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle - are our brothers. The rocky heights, the lush meadows, the body warmth of the ponies - and the people we all belong to the same family. When the great chief in Washington sends us news that he is thinking of selling our land he is asking a lot from us.
We rejoice because of these woods. I don't know - our way is different from yours. Sparkling water that flows in streams and rivers is not only water - but the blood of our forefathers. When we sell you our land you must know that it is holy and you must teach your children that it is holy...
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One part of the land is the same for him as the other parts because he is a stranger. He comes in the night and takes from the earth what he needs.
He treats his mother, the earth and his brother, the sky as things to be bought and plundered to be sold like sheep or shining pearls. His hunger will destroy the earth and leave nothing but a desert behind.
I don't know - our way is different to yours. The sight of your towns hurts the eyes of the red man. Maybe because the red man is a savage and doesn't understand.
There is no peace in the white man's towns. No place where you can hear leaves unfurling in the spring or the buzzing of insects.
What is there in life when you can't hear the cry of the Goat maids birds or the sounds of frogs in a pond at night? I am a red man and don't understand it. The Indian likes the gentle sound of the winds as it strokes the surface of the water and the smell of the winds cleaned by the midday rain or heavy with the scent of pines. The air is precious to the red man...
The white man doesn't seem to notice the air that he breathes...
And when we sell you our land, you must treasure it as something special, as a place where the white man can also sense that the wind smells sweetly of meadow flowers. We will consider the request to buy our land and when we finally accept it will be under one condition. The white man must treat the animals like brothers. I am a savage and I understand it no other way. I have seen thousands of decaying buffaloes left behind by the white man - shot from a passing train. I am a savage...who killed the buffalo only to survive.
What happens to animals - soon also happens to people. All things are linked together.
Teach your children what we teach our children. The earth is our mother. What happens to the earth, also happens to the sons of the earth. When people spit on the earth they are spitting on themselves. We know that the earth does not belong to the people but the people to the earth - this we know. All things are linked together...
Humans did not make the fabric of life they are only one of the fibres. What you do to the fabric, you are doing to yourself.
But my people ask, what does the white man want? How can you buy the sky or the warmth of the earth - or the speed of the antelope? How can we sell you these things - and how can you buy them? Can you then do what you want with the earth - purely because a red man signs a piece of paper - and gives it to the white man? When we don't even possess the freshness of the air or the sparkling of the water - how can you sell them? Can you buy the buffalo back when the last has been killed?
The more I read, the more it seems that the origins of this speech and whether Chief Seattle himself actually gave it (or if the "translator" took liberties), so maybe it's not as conclusive as I'd thought.
A start, though.
Wow. Still reading. Thanks.
The problem with stereotypes is that they are stereotypes.
It is as foolish to speak of what Amerindians believed in as it is to speak of what Europeans believed in in the same time period. There were just as many tribes of Amerindians, often in competition for scarce resources, as there were of Europeans.
Species diversity takes a nose-dive when humans arrive in the "new world" thousands of years ago, just as was the case with all of the other continents. Several large game species disappeared within a relatively short period of time. Tribes not only competed with one another, they at times attempted to exterminate one another--the Iroquois attempt to exterminate all the other tribes in the Great Lakes basin in the period 1640-1690 is an excellent example. The experience of the Hudson's Bay Company in trading with Amerindians (and it is important to note that in aid of their trading policies, HBC would allow no European colonization in their territory, in order to protect the Amerindians who were the source of their income) is that the Amerindians would gladly hunt a species to extinction if it would pay, and would lie, steal and cheat one another to get the wherewithal to trade for the highly valued trade goods. Many of the tribes east of the Mississippi practiced swidden farming. They would band trees to kill them, burn off the underbrush, and then plant corps. They would do this in strips around the village, and having exhausted the soil around the village, they would move on to another location. Far from showing any particular reverence for notions of "harmony and balance," the evidence is that they simply decided other tribes needed to be destroyed or driven off when population exceeded resources.
Much of what passes now for the "universal" values of Amerindians in fact only applies to North America north of the Rio Grande, and has much the flavor of "survival" culture. What is claimed as the universal and ancient culture of the tribes is the reality forced on them by circumstances as they were pushed to the brink of extinction.
Yes, it is questionable whether Chief Seattle originated this. If Smith was present, surely he asked for SOME sort of translation...even if he paraphrased it.
If not all American Indians held these values then surely SOME tribes or groups did. Which ones.
Itchy says:
Much of what passes now for the "universal" values of Amerindians in fact only applies to North America north of the Rio Grande.
Anything more specific?
Yes, these claims about balance and harmony are the politically correct versions which have been promoted by AIM and other groups since the early 1970s. They are not consonant with historical evidence.
As an example, it is often alleged of primitive people's (referring to their technology--homo sapiens sapiens is homo sapiens sapiens, regardless of the relative sophistication of culture--all people of this species are as intelligent, and as stupid, as any others) that they waste nothing. The suggestion is that such people would not kill an animal without using every bit of the carcass--such claims are part an parcel of the PC propaganda of late twentieth century North American Amerindians. This ignores the deadfalls which are found right across the continent. One with which i was familiar in southern Illinois, in the Giant City State Park, was known as Stonefort. The piled stone walls which channeled herds of games to a cliff over which they would be precipitated, while people waited below to butcher the victims, are sitll visible, even though it is estimated that Stonefort had not been used for the purpose for nearly five hundred years. As long as buffalo and elk, and any other herd species, were sufficiently numerous, deadfalls were a simple way to slaughter large numbers, and get the meat necessary to live through the winter. Whatever could not be carried off would be left to the scavengers. You cannot dig there now, of course, because it's a state park, but old timers say you could at a time (before the CCC came along) dig down to a very thick layer of crushed bones.
My name is not "Itchy," try to show a little courtesy.
Quote:My name is not "Itchy," try to show a little courtesy.
yet in your sigline, you wrote:Itchy Homo
looks like Hadda made an honest mistake there, Boss...
Set,
A friend of mine is coming down from Canada in a few weeks, Makanda is one of the places I plan on taking him.
---------
It's easy to fall into the trap of romanticizing a conquered people/culture, even if you are trying to look at the history with an unbiased view. People have a natural tendency to root for the underdog, writers even more so if they become caught up in their own story. It's natural to want to "pick sides", many writers do this, and it shows in the novels or screenplays that depict the natives perspective...and to a lesser extent in {newer} text and history books.
We, the European conquerors, {the antagonists} tend to be portrayed as the evil greedy land grabbing capitalists...and to make a nice neat contrast, the natives {the protagonists} are shown to be the opposite...in touch with nature, spiritualistic...the whole "harmony and balance" thing, and of course very proud and majestic. You can't have a decent villain without a really good guy to play against...so the supposed "good" traits of the native cultures are amplified to achieve the proper balance of good vs evil. Two cultures working toward the same goals, using simular tacticts, but one turns out to be more powerful and wins, is just dull.
In the old John Ford type westerns, the roles of course were reversed, but as our society has evolved and time has eroded the "the only good injun is a dead injun" idea away, public perceptions of the native cultures have also reversed themselves. I know quite a few people that hold the American Indian culture in the highest regard, as if they were the very essence of a perfect society. I'd even say that most of those people would consider them to be a liberal society, and the natives were not big on respecting their fellow man, they were ruthless in many aspects of their daily lives.
Admittingly, I personally tend to think of them in a good light, but among other things, I'm also well aware of the pure viciousness that they could show to their enemies, or anyone that was found to be out of line. Some of the tribes were simply sadistic in their torture practices, and many times it was left up to the women to carry it out...who were quite willing and able to do so.
Remember most Indian tribes were semi-nomadic. When one area was hunted out, the tribe moved on. When one area had been farmed out, the tribe moved on.
Many of them had "circular" migrations, returning to specific areas when the land had recovered.
Methinks this expression of ecological spiritual superiority (i.e. Chief Seattle'speech is an expression of of a people lost yearning to leave a legacy) does not equal the reality 100 years earlier. The Iroquois leaugue were a serious contender for power in the New York and Vermont areas and were playing on a different field than the weaker tribes further East.
One point we must remember is that there were hundreds of independent Indian tribes.
You can't look at 17th century Europe and blame the Inquisition on the Swedes or give the Austrian's credit for oceanic exploration.
Surely SOME tribes embraced the stereotypical values of harmony. Any specifics?
Apologies Setanta
Barry Landis
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