Desiree

this is a post from our teacher about indigenous religions to a student in my class. This is one of the nicer posts.......

Manuel, you make some excellent points. It is very true that indigenous religions are "totalistic" for their people, as you put it, they have cosmological and natural implications for all of their behavior.

Primitive people live a very unified life. They dress the same all the time, they eat the same diets year to year, they experience the same locations and never travel that far, they know the same small group of people throughout their whole life, and so on. The religions that they develop become all-encompassing, and deal with every aspect of their lives.

This pervasiveness is something we have a hard time relating to. For us, religion is just one aspect of life. For them, it surrounded everything, and provided them a sacred lifeway.

In contact with the modern world it can be a bad thing. The modern world is all about being flexible and being willing to change, and traditional religions are not good at that.

--
Justin Halter, M.A.
here is another post from our teacher.....

I have a tough question for you. Since there is no such thing as "Native American religion", who is to say anyone else is wrong or selling a corrupt version of it? What I mean is, each tribe has its own traditional way, and there was never defined religion for all the indigenous people of the continent. What gives anyone the authority to say that a New Age shaman is doing something wrong, or inaccurate? Isn't that a bit presumptuous and judgmental?

--
Justin Halter, M.A.

Mato Winyan

They say that like it's a bad thing....




While there may be individual differences among tribes...... there is the greater way that is the same. On that there is no difference, so yeah............. it gives someone the right to speak out against others that come to steal and ba$tardize what is rightfully not theirs!! Presumptous??? Judgmental??? Call is what you will............ but that's the truth and no changing it!!

__________________








"We see it as a desecration not only of a mountain but of our way of life. This is a genocidal issue to us. If they kill this mountain, they kill our way of life." ~Debra White Plume

Desiree

Thanks for the imput
I thought judgemental might be a little harsh..
I wa a little angry from his statements. everytime i do an assignment these are his comments and worse, and a low grade to follow. He acts like he knows more about being native than i do because he read it in a book.

andre

I agree with Mato. I think this fella needs to be informed that people doing stuff the wrong way causes stereotypes etc. What's his Masters in because, no offence, he sounds kinda flaky?

OLChemist

First it sounds to this cynic like this person may not hold much in the way of faith. He doesn't seem to put much stock in the transcendant. I doubt it would never occur to him that maybe Calf Woman really did bring the pipe or that Changing Woman really did what the stories tell or that Jesus died for his sins...

Gee, sounds just like academia. I've worked in labs and classrooms in seven states. They could have been anywhere with an O2/N2 atmosphere and 120V, 60 Hz electricity. It was the same types of people with the same backgrounds, the same mix of accents and worldviews. Only difference I saw was the quality of the padthai in the local resturants.

It's human nature to maintain a certain equilbrium. We all surround ourselves with a bubble of sameness of our own creation. It sounds like someone needs to step down off the pedestal western modern superiority and look around.

For that matter, what religion doesn't deal with every aspect of life? Even your average sophisticated, urban-dwelling agnostic seeks to have social systems of state-craft regulate every aspect of life.

So is he relegating Christianity to the ashbin of traditional religion? If not, did he miss the Inquisition and a bizillion back-to-the-roots-of-the-faith utopian movements?

Do I hear the drum beats of the Hegelian teleological progress? Material culture may "progress" but I don't see much evidence that humans change -- they just get better toys with which to distract themselves while they run in the circles of human nature.... Something traditional religions (including Christianity) seem to acknowledge. (Heck, even the hard-core unbelieving Darwinists acknowledge that evolution is a zero sum game for every "forward" change to increasing complexity there is a "backwards" step to decreasing complexity.)

(Yikes this post is what happens when nerds stay up too late, LOL.)

NDNKIDZ

HAHAHAHHAHAH TO FUNNNY.. goot post..

__________________
"I don't mind coming to work,
> But that eight hour wait to go home is a BITE."

Joe's Dad

Methinks OL Chemist should go audit Desiree's class...

And bring scunion upon the instructor!!!:

__________________

Blue Poet

I think a parent should send these to the principal and the school district and ask what kind of 'diversity training' teachers are receiving. Here's a guy who thinks his 'M.A.' has made him the foremost authority on everything. He is way out of line. I take total exception to the first comments he apparently made. And, I might add, he is being totally 'presumptuous and judgmental' about 'primitive people'. He apparently hasn't done ALL his homework on the nomadic lifestyles of our ancestors and how that fits in with 'his' idea of their 'unified' life. Bah!!!!!!

Blue Poet

If you consider that Mr. Justin Halter might be Jewish it puts another spin on this. Re-read what he wrote from that perspective.

OLChemist

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I was not assuming Mr. Halter was a Christian, I was speaking of the profound influence Christian thought has had on modern western thought.

The idea of constant forward progress has it's roots in the Jewish Messianic thought (including early Christianity) and Roman and Greek mystery cults that were the soil of the modern west. It was given further development through out the middle ages and reformation. The idea crossed into secular reasoning during the enlightenment. Stripped of its religious and ethical overtones, Hegel's idea of historical progress with the current age being the highest state of development, is still a major undercurrent of western thought. (As is social Darwinism and it's buddy Manifest Destiny.)

It is what I was seeing in his statments. Not a particular express religious identity but instead a overall belief in human culture as a forward moving process.

I actually wonder if Mr. Halter is a devotee of Levi-Strauss (the anthro not the jeans) and structural anthropology. It sound like he is expounding Levi-Strausses hot and cold society models. The poor man, the Boasians probably eat him for lunch.

I have a question tho' Is this a college course?

badmaninc

Guy sounds like he read a little and that makes him dangerous. Doesn't sound like he actually spent any time with our people. If he said that it totally encompasses our lives and beings then he must not know very much. I grew up in the Roman Catholic and they never want to change. They love their rituals.