ABSTRACT
Many scholars of North American indigenous history, culture, and religion have recognized and analyzed native peoples’ special connection to their homelands. Because of native peoples’ understanding of their creation and emergence into this world, along with the animist nature of their religion, the land is intrinsic to the tribes’ spiritual identity and their cultural survival. Marcia Pablo (Flathead) confirms this notion in her essay, “Preservation as Perpetuation,” published in a 2001 issue of American Indian Quarterly,13 stating that the
First Nations of this continent did not have a written history in book form, as did the non-Indian peoples who came here. Our history is written in our unique and specific cultural landscapes. These places hold the memories of our ancestors, speak to us in the present, and are crucial to our survival, as Indian people, into the future. (18)
Acoma Pueblo poet and essayist Simon Ortiz in the introduction to his collection of poetry, Woven Stone (1992), asserts that Native Americans have always depended spiritually on the land and thus have a special relationship with it, which, however, has been ruptured by the Euro-American settlers. Ortiz maintains:
Native Americans had a religious belief that depended upon a spiritual and material relationship with creation and the earth. People got what they needed to live from the land-earth, and they gave back, with their work, responsibility, and careful use of natural resources, what the land needed. Their creators gave them life, and they, with prayer, meditation, and ritual, gave back life; they received and gave. This belief was a system of reciprocity in every respect, and the relationship they had with the creators and earth was the guiding rule which was applied to their social communal system. (29)
This passage demonstrates tribal people’s perspective of the interconnectedness of all elements of the earth, which determines their worldview and daily life.
