SERVICES & SPIRITUAL MESSAGES

                                          Native American religion

    Native American languages do not have a term for "religion." Spirituality for virtually all the tribes views life as a journey on earth maintaining balance and equality with the universe. It is essential to keep the gods and spirits appeased to prevent bad weather and illnesses and to have a happy eternal life. Spiritual beliefs include the belief in a creator(s) who design a multi-world system where all things created, including inanimate objects, have spirits. Humans, who are equal to everything else created, must seek to maintain balance and harmony by living according to the teachings and commands handed down by their ancestors from the creator(s). An afterlife awaits those who live in balance with the world.  Native American people's belief structure usually centers around a central primary God served by a pantheon of gods and spirits. There is typically a counterpart to God, an evil presence, or nature that controls its pantheon of spirits. Native American belief systems differ in the names of their gods, spirits, spiritual leaders, and practices. The sacrifices range from human, vegetable, and animal types to the different seasons. Their view of the universe structure differs, with some believing in a single Creator or many creators of a multiple world system. The cosmic visions of indigenous peoples are significantly diverse. Each nation and community has its own unique traditions. Still, several characteristics stand out. First, it is common to envision the creative process of the universe as a form of thought or mental process. Second, it is common to have a source of creation that is plural, either because several entities participate in creation or because the process as it unfolds includes many sacred actors stemming from a First Principle (Father/Mother or Grandfather/Grandmother). Third, the agents of creation are seldom pictured as human, but are depicted instead as “wakan” (holy), or animal-like (coyote, raven, great white hare, etc.), or as forces of nature (such as wind/breath). The Lakota medicine man Lame Deer says that the Great Spirit “is not like a human being. . . . He is a power. The Great Spirit is no old man with a beard.”The concept perhaps resembles the elohim of the Jewish Genesis, the plural form of eloi, usually mistranslated as “God,” as though it were singular.

Perhaps the most important aspect of indigenous cosmic visions is the conception of creation as a living process, resulting in a living universe in which a kinship exists between all things. Thus the Creators are our family, our Grandparents or Parents, and all of their creations are children who, of necessity, are also our relations.

An ancient Ashiwi (Zuñi) prayer-song states:

That our earth mother may wrap herself
In a four-fold robe of white meal [snow]; . . .
When our earth mother is replete with living waters,
When spring comes,
The source of our flesh,
All the different kinds of corn
We shall lay to rest in the ground with the earth mother’s
living waters,
They will be made into new beings,
Coming out standing into the daylight of their Sun father, to
all sides
They will stretch out their hands. . .

Thus the Mother Earth is a living being, as are the waters and the Sun.

Juan Matus told Carlos Castaneda that Genaro, a Mazateco, “was just now embracing this enormous earth . . . but the earth knows that Genaro loves it and it bestows on him its care. . . . This earth, this world. For a warrior there can be no greater love. . . . This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling. . . .”

Or, as Lame Deer puts it:

We must try to use the pipe for mankind, which is on the road to self-destruction. . . . This can be done only if all of us, Indians and non-Indians alike, can again see ourselves as part of the earth, not as an enemy from the outside who tries to impose its will on it. Because we . . . also know that, being a living part of the earth, we cannot harm any part of her without hurting ourselves.

 Native Americans see the entire universe as being alive—that is, as having movement and an ability to act. But more than that, indigenous Americans tend to see this living world as a fantastic and beautiful creation engendering extremely powerful feelings of gratitude and indebtedness, obliging us to behave as if we are related to one another. An overriding characteristic of Native North American religion is that of gratitude, a feeling of overwhelming love and thankfulness for the gifts of the Creator and the earth/universe. As a Cahuilla elder, Ruby Modesto, has stated: “Thank you mother earth, for holding me on your breast. You always love me no matter how old I get.” Or as Joshua Wetsit, an Assiniboine elder born in 1886, put it: “But our Indian religion is all one religion, the Great Spirit. We’re thankful that we’re on this Mother Earth. That’s the first thing when we wake up in the morning, is to be thankful to the Great Sprit for the Mother Earth: how we live, what it produces, what keeps everything alive.”

Many years ago, the Great Spirit gave the Shawnee, Sauk, Fox, and other peoples maize or corn. This gift arrived when a beautiful woman appeared from the sky. She was fed by two hunters, and in return she gave them, after one year, maize, beans, and tobacco. “We thank the Great Spirit for all the benefits he has conferred upon us. For myself, I never take a drink of water from a spring, without being mindful of his goodness.”

There are four Sacred Medicines: Tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass. These are traditional medicines that have physical qualities for medicinal purposes, and a spiritual aspect used in traditional healing and ceremonies. Care and attention should be given when harvesting Sacred Medicines.

For hundreds of years
          certainly for thousands
Our Native elders
          have taught us
“All My Relations”
          means all living things
          and the entire Universe
“All Our Relations”
          they have said
          time and time again. . . .

Do you doubt still?
          a rock alive? You say
          it is hard!
          it doesn’t move of its own accord!
          it has no eyes!
          it doesn’t think!
          but rocks do move
          put one in a fire
          it will get hot won’t it?
          That means
          won’t you agree?
          that its insides are moving
          ever more rapidly?. . .

So don’t kid me my friend,
          rocks change
          rocks move
          rocks flow
          rocks combine
          rocks are powerful friends
          I have many
          big and small
          their processes, at our temperatures,
          are very slow
          but very deep!

I understand because, you see,
          I am part rock!
          I eat rocks
          rocks are part of me
          I couldn’t exist without
          the rock in me
          We are all related!

No, it’s alive I tell you,
          just like the old ones say
          they’ve been there
          you know
          they’ve crossed the boundaries
          not with computers
          but with their 
          very own beings!