And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 1999 19:00:31 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The muddle over what is sacred
As native religious beliefs revive, some elders disagree over what is sacred.
Colin Grey and Derek McNaughton
The Ottawa Citizen August 7, 1999
Native spirituality continues to claw (??) back from extinction, but chasms between
Indians over what is and what is not sacred for aboriginal people have also begun to
appear. One of those voids emerged early last month when a museum curator in Hull,
himself a Cree, told the Curve Lake First Nations band near Peterborough they had no
historical basis to call a collection of rock carvings in Petroglyphs Provincial Park
"sacred."
Bernard Assiniwi's comments, reported in the Citizen, pitted him directly against the
teachings of Peter Ocheise, a highly-respected Ojibway elder, who said taking pictures
of the carvings froze spirits that inhabit them. The spectacle of two authoritative
native voices contradicting each other demonstrates just how muddled native
spirituality has become, even as it has re-emerged and flourished over the last 30
years. The confusion is compounded by the sharing of spiritual practices between
different tribes and the popularization of some rituals, like powwows, that were once
regional. At the same time, native spirituality has spawned more than its share of New
Age imitations and rampant hucksterism -- taking a place among tarot cards, astrology,
incense and aromatherapy.
"Here in Toronto we had someone advertising 'sweat-like experiences' in a room in
downtown Toronto," says Oriah Mountain Dreamer, a writer who conducts workshops based
on native beliefs, and the author of the hot-selling book The Invitation, based on her
popular poem of the same name. "Now, I don't know if you've ever been in a sweat
lodge, but it's a long way from sitting in a room at the University of Toronto," she
says. "It sounds romantic, it sounds sexy, and it sells the workshop, but they're not
doing the ceremony."
The genuine ceremonies practised by aboriginal people until the end of the last
century -- when government bans forced Indian spiritual practices underground and
nearly crushed native culture and language entirely -- have today become almost
mainstream.
Now, it is easy to find a powwow, potlatch or sweat lodge, albeit with admission fees,
and the revival has led natives to embrace all things aboriginal. Chiefs of eastern
tribes wear elaborate head-dresses, adopting a custom from southwestern Sioux tribes.
And "dream catchers," the web-like circles adorned with feathers, hang from rear-view
mirrors like fuzzy dice and air fresheners. "It's become very commercial," says
Gordon Williams, a elder of Cree and Ojibway descent living in Ottawa. "There are only
a very few powwows you can go to that are traditional." Mr. Williams says the
marketing of spirituality and the casual use of rituals like the sweat lodge is
unfortunate. "You don't just have a sweat because you want to lock yourself in a
little place where you're going to get up to 150 degrees and pour water all over
yourself," he says. "It's not that simple. It has to be for a reason."
Today's native spirituality reflects the history of oppression that lies at the root
of so many government policies and other elements of our society's treatment of
aboriginals, say several experts. Beginning in the late 1800s, governments banned such
practices as the potlatch among Northwestern peoples and the thirst-dance endurance
rituals. In 1914, governments prohibited appearing in traditional dress and performing
dances at fairs or stampedes. A crackdown followed in the 1920s. Such laws worked hand
in hand with Christian residential schools to destroy aboriginal culture.
When the schools closed in the 1960s and native spirituality resurfaced, many young
aboriginals did not know where or how to find their roots. Indians from smaller bands,
communities where the historical break was more severe, looked to bigger tribes like
the Sioux, the Cree or the Lakota for messages that resonated with them.
Stephen Augustine, a historical researcher at the Museum of Civilization's Department
of Civilization, said in his Micmac community in the Maritimes, "young people ended up
travelling to South Dakota, Alberta, to the Plains to experience some sense of native
spirituality among the Cree and Lakota. And they came back to our communities doing
the sun dance, singing Lakota songs and singing Cree songs." The spread of the same
Indian traditions across the continent is dubbed "pan-Indianism" -- the result of a
need to seek spirituality from different sources and the new access to different
regions. "Some groups only burned tobacco, some burned sweetgrass, some burned sage,
some burned cedar, depending on what was available to them," says Mr. Williams. "Now,
if you're speaking to any elders in any part of this country, they've got all four
elements and they use all four elements as the sacred elements in their ceremonies.
That doesn't in any way make anything less important or les!
!
s re
al in the way someone presents it, because each tribe and each nation has their own
particular way of doing things and that remains relatively consistent."
Yet, individual spiritual choices have now taken on great importance. "Something that
is sacred could be an altar in a church for some aboriginal people. And a pipe could
be more sacred to somebody else within the same community," says Mr. Augustine. In the
last decade, it also became possible for some pipe-carriers to view themselves in a
European priest-like role, and to label a growing number of objects sacred. "Rather
than being therapeutic ceremonies or rituals, they became sacred everything became so
sacred," says Stanley Cuthand, an 80-year-old who grew up on the Little Pine Indian
Reserve in Saskatchewan. "They were trying to establish this awe around native
spirituality which didn't exist."
Drums and eagle feathers became sacred in the way objects were considered holy in
Christian churches, Mr. Cuthand explains. "The word sacred comes from the church and
it actually is the term used for things that are set aside for worship," he says. Mr.
Cuthand, an Anglican minister now working on a new translation of the Bible into Cree,
is one of many aboriginals who did not turn their back on the Christian church. Ian
Mackenzie, director of the native ministries program at the Vancouver School of
Theology, says Christianity and native spirituality go hand in hand for many native
people. Mr. Mackenzie credits the Indian ecumenical movement, which began in the late
1960s, with helping to spark the renewed interest in native spirituality. "In general,
I'd say that to say there is an absolute contradiction is absolutely wrong," he says.
"I've been in sweat lodges. Sweat lodges are simply a particular form of religious
worship."
The debate over the Petroglyph Park's rock carvings illustrates the disagreements that
do exist. Ontario Parks has now banned all photographs of the petroglyphs -- with more
than 800 carvings of snakes, birds, animals and the Great Spirit. Parks officials
prohibited photos out of respect for the spiritual beliefs of the Curve Lake Band.
The band, considered spiritual caretakers of the "Teaching Rocks," believes
photographs of the rocks steal from the spirit of the rocks. They believe this because
Mr. Ocheise, the Ojibway elder in his late 90s living near Edmonton, Alberta, has
taught them that "once the rocks are captured on film, it freezes the spirit."
Michael Doxtater, a researcher at the American Indian program at Cornell University,
says behind such debates lies a modern dialogue over Indian identity, the
institutionalization of Indian spirituality and the government's inability to deal
with diverse expressions of Indian faith. The government, in essence, accepts the
Indian's word because it feels natives have a right to determine what's culturally
significant. "In prehistory, up until 200 years ago, before the invention of the
camera, I don't imagine there were too many opportunities for Indians to be taking
pictures of petroglyphs," says Mr. Doxtater. "I also think that the dispute between
the elder and the museum is not about sacrilization of Indian culture. What they're
really talking about is intellectual property rights."
The appearance of formal Indian religions in the 19th century and federal legislation
like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the United States,
which placed special protection on Indian burial sites, "institutionalized" Indian
religions, he adds. That institutionalization has continued, for example, in the form
of Canadian funding for artistic projects of a spiritual nature at the expense of
non-sacred art, Mr. Doxtater says. "Indian spirituality is much different than that.
It isn't a dogmatic, rhetorical form," says Mr. Doxtater. "It involves a lot of
introspection, critical reflection. It involves questing and fasting and certain
practices that have more to do with individual autonomy than they do with group mind
control that religions seem to promote."
That introspection was evident in July at a lunch-hour Kumik, a sacred teaching
circle, in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development building in Hull,
where about 15 native people came to hear elder, spiritual healer and medicine woman
Jeorgina Larocque tell stories that revealed some old Indian ways. A Micmac from
Parrsboro, N.S., who travels around on her husband's small pension so she can share
the stories of her past and her people, Ms. Larocque explained that love, respect and
loyalty are the cornerstones of growth. She talked about the shrinking of the
seasons, about loving your work, about keeping the faith. As four candles burned
around a collection of feathers, beads, drums and dried flowers, Ms. Larocque's
audience clearly moved to tears by her wisdom. Some cried after the hour-long service.
The future of Indian culture, she says, depends on "the wisdom" being handed down to
today's generation. "I know the need, and I know the time is closing in around me,"
Mrs. Larocque, 58, said after the ceremony. "My grandmother's last request to me was
don't let the knowledge die. There is so much that is lost. "There are so few of the
(Micmac) elders today that remember the stories of 100 years ago, or remember the
stories of 200 years ago from their own grandmothers and even beyond, that a lot of
times they feel in their heart a similarity." The similarities, explains Ms.
Larocque, may be practices or customs adopted from another nation. "Each nation,
according to their own heart will use the similarity, and bring it home," she adds.
Yet while sharing customs may be more commonplace today, many experts say talking
about native spirituality as an entity is as absurd as talking about the Christian
faith without denominations. "Why is it that there is an impulse always to define an
aboriginal perspective as unitary?" asked Andrea Laforet, director of Canadian
ethnology service at the Museum of Civilization. Adds Lynda Lange, a philosophy
professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in native religion: "Native
culture isn't static any more than anybody else's culture," she says. "People from
European backgrounds or any other are constantly in a position of rebuilding and
reinterpreting their spiritual beliefs, so I think it's really unfair and wrong to
attack native people on that score."
At the same time, several practices have become routinely associated with aboriginal
faith: feasting, honour songs, dances, the burning of sweet grass, sage or tobacco.
And, of course, sweat lodges and powwows. Moreover, objects like eagle's wings and
feathers, rawhide gourds, drums, abalone shells, prayer cloths, prints and pipes are
also held to have special spiritual qualities by many Indians.
At the heart of those beliefs is a close relationship with the environment, with
"earth mother" and her children -- wind, breeze, water, rain, fire and flame. There's
also her relations, which include every tree, bird, fish, animal, stone -- anything
found in nature. "Native people have been given the gift to teach others how to
maintain mother earth," says Joe Lacroix, who is an Algonquin elder and drug and
alcohol counsellor living in Merrickville.
"Other cultures are looking to us as teachers. They're saying, 'OK, what does it
really mean to talk to a tree, to put tobacco down to it, to find a tree we can
actually talk to like a spiritual adviser?' One of the things that was lost to us is
that we used to be able to communicate with the trees and the animals."
While that might be hard to imagine or believe for most people, it's not as absurd as
it seems, says Gerry Conaty, senior curator of ethnology at the Glenbow Museum near
Calgary. "Native people relate to their environment in a much different way than
non-native people," he says. "They are part of nature rather than above it."
He says the ability to talk with the trees and animals is similar to a non-native's
belief in some aspects of science, falling outside their realm of understanding. "For
people brought up with Western science, it doesn't make any sense. But it's not any
different than electrons -- we can't see electrons or quarks. There's an element of
belief in our science. But if you go back in time, there's a cultural belief that
there was a time when animals and people communicated."
Native religious beliefs can also play a role in modern settings and the business
world. Marsha Smoke, an Ojibway owner of an Ottawa travel agency, consults elders on
any major business decision. "That's where I get my best advice from," Ms. Smoke says.
The RCMP has even posted a "native spirituality guide" on the Internet so police
officers can "gain an understanding of sacred ceremonies" -- a far cry from the 1920s
when the RCMP raided tribes and confiscated religious paraphernalia, "some of which
was sold for private gain by unscrupulous agents," writes Olive Dickason in her book
Canada's First Nations. As the RCMP notes, "the various spiritual beliefs and sacred
items and ceremonies portrayed in this guide may vary according to different tribal
groups across Canada."
That variation makes it possible for one Indian to believe the carvings in Petroglyphs
Park are fading because of exposure to the sun, while another can believe they are
fading because tourists' snapshots have sapped them of spiritual power. Whatever the
cause, disputes such as this remain immaterial, says Ms. Lange from the University of
Toronto. "It's very common," she says, "for people to criticize native groups for lack
of purity in what they claim. It's based on a romanticized view of native culture,
that (native spirituality) is somehow frozen in time, that you can say
exactly what it is, and it's not supposed to change and that if it changes then they
no longer have a right to claim entitlement to certain things. But we don't lose our
rights when we change our way of life."
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
