ABSTRACT
Many myths compare stones with the bones of Mother Earth. Extraction of minerals in most cultures has been accompanied by complex rituals and rites, undertaken as carefully as possible by, amongst other things, filling up the holes and passages into the mine when the extraction was finished. A Sioux Indian smallholder expressed this spiritual attitude thus:
‘You ask me to dig in the earth. Do I have to take a knife and plunge it into my Mother’s breast? You say that I must dig and take away the stones. Do I have to remove her flesh to reach down to her bones?’
