Native American Spirituality and Practice

but let's go ahead and get started i'm carrie bourne i'm from the office of continuing education at uw-whitewater we host the fairhaven lecture series each semester and each semester we focus on a theme and then have 10 to 12 lectures on that theme this semester we're talking about native americans and today we'll be learning much more for sure uh today we have michael p gaino who is an associate professor in the philosophy and religious studies department at uw-whitewater after graduating with a ba from louisiana state university he went on to receive his m.a and phd in religion from florida state university he specializes in american religious history and native american religions in particular he has researched and written on a range of native american groups and topics from the effigy mound cultures of wisconsin to the pueblo religions of colonial new spain to the relationship between native american religions and contemporary u.s legislation please welcome michael gaino it is a pleasure and an honor to get invited to be a part of this series it's an opportunity that i definitely can't turn down a chance to share my passion for studying native american cultures with others and to actually be able to talk to an audience of people who want to be here so unusual great so uh today's topic was entitled native american spirituality and practice um and so the obvious question is why call it that and not something like native american religion it's a complicated question the easy answer is native american spirituality and practice sound sexier than native american religion and people show up if you throw in the word spirituality but the question remains is there such a thing as native american religion spirituality is something that we have a vague sense of and religion again we don't exactly have a clear definition but we have a vague sense of it so before we can answer the question is there such a thing as a native american religion we have to recognize that there are some obstacles to coming up with an answer the first is that there's no such thing as a native american when i say native american or american indian or indian typically one of a couple of images comes to mind like of a lone indian brave sitting on horseback as they amble towards the horizon or an indian grandmother on her front porch holding a baby looking off the sunset with wrinkles lining her face whatever the image is it's usually a single image a picture of a native american and there is no such individual group or person native americans were an incredibly diverse group of peoples and cultures they differed in every conceivable way from one another in terms of arts and architecture and technology some would be really advanced in one area and be completely lacking in another aspect if they were so diverse in terms of architecture in terms of dress in terms of how they got their food in terms of how they organize themselves of course they're going to be incredibly diverse when it comes to beliefs and practices the other obstacle in trying to answer the question is there such a thing as native american religion is that the question itself is a euro-american question the word religion is not a word that has an equivalency in most native american languages it's a western term a western concept with a long and complicated history the idea of religion emerged in western history in conversation with christianity and christianity at different times either defined itself as not a religion it's just the way and all those fake things are religions whereas other times they said yes we christians are a religion and everything else is either heathenry or idolatry and it's gone back and forth with different christianities either claiming the term or rejecting the term today we have a vague notion of what religion is but not a definition most americans would say that religion is something having to do with belief that has something to do with a higher power or maybe god but as western cultures interacted with other peoples in the world our concept of religion had to change what was once just about belief in god had to become belief in god's plural and then once we came into contact with cultures that didn't just have defined gods but had some sort of underlying spiritual essence we changed gods to higher power which opens the door for religion starting to be just about anything but still we tend to focus on belief and yet if i asked you what religions have we could come up with a long list other than beliefs that religions must include for us to think of them as religions you got to have beliefs you got to have stories you got to have a sense of purpose or meaning you got to have rituals you've got to have sacred places that you gather and the list would go on and on so why do we prioritize belief because that's what's most important to religion most fundamental to religion or simply what's most important to the religion most of us are most familiar with belief was not the most important part of what we would call native american religions religion whatever else it might entail when you look at all the religions of the world and you start to look for some sort of unifying theme or function or essence religion is a way in which an individual or a group or a people realizes their cosmos makes real the universe that they live in it's the ideas the beliefs the frameworks the thoughts the deeds the structures the institutions that helps them to concretize make true make experiential what is before that only ideas religion is a way in which an individual and a group and a people allow themselves and help themselves to situate themselves relative to everything that is a way in which you come to understand and situate yourself relative to yourself relative to your family relative to your community and your home and your homeland and the universe around you however else we might define religion or expect religion to include religion is that thing and native americans do have that whether we call it spirituality or religion this idea of relationality reveals arguably the central theme within native american religion and that is kinship for native american cultures this world is defined by an interconnected web of familial relationships you can understand how to interact with anyone any person anything by understanding how you are related to them and you are related to them in some way kinship the concept itself especially for native american communities is more than blood we might talk about a family of people that we are related to but when we're being honest sometimes we admit that our family is more than just the people we're related to by genetics your friends the people who care for you the people who love you the people who have an active role in your lives this is your kin same two for native american cultures most native american religions have rituals have life ways that allow you to make kin a group of people or an individual that previously you had no connection to you do a ritual and suddenly this person is now a member of your group of your people they are to you as a brother or as a sister or as a mother and kinship has defined family relationships you're late to your mom different than you did to your daughter and there are structured ways you're supposed to relate to each did you love your mama most people even people who hate their mama love their mama right it is taught to you it's hammered in and did you feel the same way about your mom as you did your dad a little bit different which one was supposed to be the more authoritative one i did say you're supposed to society usually tells you it's dead right but in reality you kind of know it's mom and you know that you're supposed to treat these people in slightly different ways and if you treat them right they treat you right so when you interact understanding how to relate to another human being you have to know what the proper kinship relationship is to that person someone who's like your grandparents age but not actually your grandparents is kind of like a great uncle someone who's kind of like your dad but not exactly your actual father is kind of like an uncle you treat them the way you treat that member of the family and they then in turn are expected to treat you as a member of that family that includes non-humans too most native american religions recognize that you are bound you are related to all of the other things that are out there we would call them spirits gods goddesses when you understand how you are related to them the relationship you treat them according to the proper relationship and you can then expect that they will treat you that way if you if the son is father or if you know about the corn mothers who are grandmothers or the rattlesnakes that are cousins if you treat them appropriately you might expect that they treat you in the same manner kinship is the way in which you understand your place in everything in that light nature is going to be understood and it's nature that plays an extremely and powerful role in native american religions all of nature this natural world this universe we find ourselves in is just one big vast interconnected web of family relations human beings animals plants the sun the moon all of those supernatural entities or spirits that are out there we are all part of the same thing the same network of interrelated interdependent and reciprocal relationships so the human beings the natural world the supernatural world we are all part of one interconnected family so to speak as much sense as that makes to us i have to complicate that a little bit with the term supernatural i use that word because that's a word in english it's a word that we know what it means more than natural but there was no such concept or term in native american religion supernatural means something other than nature something more than nature but most native american religions pictured not a world of physical and spirit but one entire world of the same thing so just as much as you see little squirrels running around up trees so too there might be little spirits that are running around through those limbs you may not see them but they are just as real and just as they are as the squirrel is and just as you understand how to relate to a snake that is treated as a cousin so too you learn how to relate to the moon who might be mother and both are just as real and just a part of this same one world that we ourselves walk in when we pass over from this life to the next we might move on to an afterlife and many native american religions but that place of the spirit or of the dead is still a part of this world this natural world it might be beyond the heavens or it might be just over that hill but it's still a part of this one unified reality like most native american religions sorry like most religions native american religions also have a role in structuring authority and power any culture we look at religion is inseparable from existing power structures religions help tell you who has power why they have power when they have power over what subject matters they have power as well as having a role in shaping less formal structures of power like gender norms native american religions are the same they help to give identity to a tribe they help to break up a tribe into different clans to give meaning to those clans to explain why we are broken up in those clans and why each of these clans must work together why each one is equally important and necessary to the function and health of the other it explains what it means to be a man or to be a woman how do you behave appropriately in those roles what authorities and power you have in each of those roles and in some native cultures there's more than just two genders which will also have their own unique rights and responsibilities just like the genders were more familiar with in terms of religion religious leadership native american religions have that too we call them shamans they are what i call religious professionals people whose job it is is to do religion full-time you can call them a priest or a minister or a preacher we just when talking about native american cultures call them a shaman they're the people that have the knowledge the knowledge of how to interact with the spirit world when things go wrong they're the ones that are able to tell you what went wrong they're the ones who know how to fix it if some misfortune is plaguing us they're the one who can tell us what's spirit we have offended what ceremony needs to be done to make our relationship with that spirit right again shamans they can be called from [Music] called by vision in some cultures it's an inherited position sometimes you're a shaman if the previous shaman picks you out is the next one whether you want it or not in other cultures you're a shaman if you've had some sort of traumatic childhood experience been near death and been healed or maybe if you were born with some sort of physical melody it varied from culture to culture but most native american religions have these shamans if religion is going to have a role in shaping and defining kinship and saying who has the power and who doesn't then obviously religion plays a central role in communal well communal togetherness i guess in binding a community together religion helps to give form and meaning to social structures clan divisions why they're important ceremonies that each claim is supposed to do what what power does the chief have if we have a chief what power does shaman have if we have a shaman or a father what we would consider spiritual power or religious power was not something held just by a few in native american cultures the shaman would have ceremonies that only he could do but so too would the chief the civil chief the war chief the reign chief they would all have special power special ceremonies special responsibilities that were theirs and theirs alone so religion was entwined with the creation of leadership and authority and respect and all of those structures that create the society that we live in and religion is that force that makes sure the stuff that this society needs to have happen actually happens religion galvanizes people gets a community to make sure that the farming gets done when it cut when it's time for the farming when we need to hunt we need to hunt together for increased communal success when we go to war we need to go to war together religion is the thing that pulls us together joins us together as a people gets us to focus our efforts on these really important activities religion is what's going to teach you how to do these activities and to justify when you do those activities whether it is farming or hunting or warfare but as your societies change as your situations change religion is there too to help you negotiate that change to make sense of it to understand it and to survive it religion helps you make sense of regular and mundane changes like life cycle transitions most native cultures are going to have rituals that help to bring attention to and make happen those transitions from one phase of life to another like when a boy becomes a man and a girl becomes a woman and when you go from being a single person to now a part of a household supposed to have kids or when it's time to move on from this life to what comes next religion has something to bring attention to these transitions and to help people make sense of them as well as to make sense of more dramatic changes like when native american religion came into contact with christianity religion helped to give voice to the voiceless and the face of missionary efforts it allowed them a foundation and a strength to voice opposition to the imposed christianity it allowed them to understand why this was happening to them sometimes to embrace this new religion sometimes to reject it sometimes to create a third category that was neither native american nor christian but something that was both and neither that allowed these two religions and two peoples to come together religion throughout native american history is going to inspire movements and innovations to help a native individual or help native people survive in the face of traumatic social change but the question remains is there such a thing as a native american religion that question itself and religion itself has been a point of conflict between euro-american cultures and native cultures when we think of religion in the west we tend to think about a religion that is either true or false and if this religion is true then it must be true for everyone and that's not the way native american cultures had their spirituality religion their life way these are our stories these are our practices and our beliefs and they are true for us and the people next to you the nearby clan or tribe they have their stories their life ways their rituals and they are true for them while they might have had different beliefs and practices why they might have had something that we call religion native american cultures do not seem to have ever gone to war over differences in it because that's not the understanding of truth within native american cultures throughout the history of interacting with euro-american settler colonialism native american religions have been well targeted for systematic termination during colonization missionaries would try to find out what they could about native american religions so that they could better use that to root them out during the policy of forced removal we disregarded native american religions as the superstitions of a backwards and primitive people during the war policy of the u.s that's the period where we try to forcibly exterminate native americans native american religion was simply an obstacle to be ignored lest it draw attention to the common humanity of the people that we are committing genocide against but it's during the peace policy that native american religion really endured its worst violence the peace policy is what gives rise to many of the horrors of the boarding school period when native american children were taken from their parents and sent off to boarding school and in boarding schools they had christianity forced upon them along with english as well as indoctrination into how to disrespect your family elders religion was a part of what it meant to be an american during the peace policy period between the 1800s and 1954 native american religion was actually formally against the law in the united states native american dances ceremonies traditional practices and beliefs were outlawed not until 1954 were native americans actually allowed to practice their religion openly and freely during the 1960s and 70s as a result of attention brought to the plight of native americans by activists especially the american indian movement congress finally had to act in 1878 in recognition of some of the past failures of the united states congress passed the american indian religious freedom act which let's make sure i get my language right which sought to protect the religious rights traditional religions and cultural practices of american indians eskimo aleut and native hawaiians if these rights were to include but not but are not limited to access to their sacred sites freedom to practice their ceremonial and traditional rights the use and possession of their sacred objects and as a consequence of that repatriation of some of their sacred objects that have historically been interned within museums this a airfa is a huge step towards religious liberty for native americans it recognized some of the failures some of the mistakes of the united states and started to move towards establishing religious liberty for native peoples but it didn't actually include any provisions about how to enforce it so it was sort of a failure in its actual implication or application uh in recognizing that congress came together in 1994 past house resolution 4155 that works as both u.s law and a joint resolution and in june 20th 1994 the federal government thereafter was to ensure that federal lands must be managed in such a way as not to undermine or frustrate the traditional religions of native americans house resolution 4 2 42 30 went further still to protect the use of peyote and controlled substances within the use of native american religious ceremonies but still you know that native americans do not have access to many of the sites recognized as sacred by their people still they do not actually have the freedom to practice and perform many of their traditional religious practices because of the first amendment the first amendment guarantees the freedom of religion right the free exercise thereof right after they the the no establishment or disestablishment clause but what does free exercise actually mean when typically when people hear the word free exercise we americans mean the ability to practice your religion that's what most of us think we have by free exercise but in the united states the term free exercise has historically been defined by the supreme court as the ability of each american to reach hold and change their beliefs according to the dictates of their conscience free exercise in united states means your ability to believe anything you want your government can interfere and stop your practice your ability to practice the beliefs that come sorry to practice the things the activities that flow from those beliefs so native americans can believe anything they want in the united states they have that freedom of religion now but any practice or access to any sacred site or anything that those beliefs might mandate or require is not protected it's not guaranteed and as the result of ongoing com national and state level legislation so that's my quick overview i was told to do this in 30 minutes the introduction native american religion that i normally cover um what you just got in 30 minutes normally takes me uh two weeks um so that was a 30 minute version but i'm so that we get to have questions now so this was the big overview that what native american religion is all about some of the central themes and ideas and some of the problems faced for native american religion in america today but i have nowhere i need to be for a while so if you all have questions uh yeah i would love to get some so if you raise your hand i'm gonna come around with the microphone so we can hear it in the back thank you you mentioned that the native american groups did not fight among themselves because of religious beliefs okay was it did they fight just like the europeans did because of greed or or not enough space or they wanted somebody else's land or how did that go because i just you know you read about the iroquois were war-like and that that and i and i just wonder if if they were fighting among themselves wouldn't they understand war with the whites a little bit better the easy answer is that it's complicated uh i remember i said about diversity so when talking about native american cultures and war it's going to be the same thing some native american groups were completely pacifistic would refuse to go to war and saw the shedding of human blood as the greatest of spiritual offenses whereas other cultures went to war every time the snows thawed when the snows thawed spring came it was time to go to war and you go to war the local group that you've gone to war with every year previously that's just the way of life and times as to why do people war we in the west tend to think that it's because of scarcity that we fight over common resources and that that's um the main reason but some indigenous communities actually would go to war just because it was easier you could wait for someone else to clear a crop a spot of land to make a tillable field it's a lot easier to go and just kill them after they did that than to actually clear their land and if you happen to lose a couple of people on on the way there's less miles to feed win-win other groups went to war for well reasons we can't exactly be too clear of we they went to war but there was more than enough land or resources in the area for both groups to have been able to exist when we think about war today it's not always just because of pragmatic reasons you think of religion sometimes you go into war not because you're disagreeing with their beliefs but you believe that they are wrong evil that some how there might be something that your spirits or gods command you to do that requires them to not be there anymore what about emotions people go to war for hate for love when we think about ancient greece or modern day we can attribute these same complicated motivations so even in the absence of evidence for early peoples just because we don't have a lot of evidence in documents we have to assume the same level of complexity so we don't know exactly why we see no evidence of them going to war or having conflicts of belief but we they did go to war okay we have a few questions back here we'll go here first were there female shamans yes yeah it depends on the culture um in some some native american groups were strictly patriarchal and male dominated others were matriarchal some were patrilineal and all of the rights descended through the male line other were matrilineal and the rights descended through the female line in terms of religious power some cultures had male shamans some to really matter if you were touched by the spirits in the appropriate way you were a shaman and gender or sexuality made no difference in some cultures really what we would call a shaman was everybody among the pueblo everyone as a part of getting to adulthood was given additional teachings and ceremonies that only an adult member of this community could do and this would be for both the men becoming men and the women becoming women and then you had people who sort of did more ceremonies than other people and they would be what we would call chief through shamans so religious leadership or power was far more diffused than we tend to think of it but yeah for native american cultures quite often sex and gender was not a limitation to religious authority okay there was over here well when the spanish were down in mexico and they met the indians they basically intermingled with them whereas in the u.s we saw the indians as our enemy why is why was that both happens in both places among the missionary the spanish missionaries uh you can read their accounts some saw the native americans as essentially the ideal fertile ground for christianity they were the ideal human not being corrupted by the sins of europe and so they were ripe for just receiving this christian message great human beings whereas other spanish missionaries saw them as sub-human beasts and questioned whether or not they even had souls so too did english settlers some of the puritans saw native americans as essentially the next ideal christian that the native americans would produce the true christian church that all the world would see and sort of model themselves after whereas others wrote that when they looked in the faces of these dark savages they saw the face of satan staring back within spanish lands new spain you do get uh hybridization intermarriage intermingling between spanish and the indigenous population you get the same thing in the english colonies they just don't talk about it as much the spanish recognized it they recognized and created different ethnic categories for people who of mixed ancestry whereas english colonists just left it in the margins of their diaries so white people were becoming a part of native american cultures native americans were living in english towns within the first 20 years of english settlement but you never hear it talked about nor is that a part of our image of the native american it's always leathers and feathers not roughly shirts and blue jeans but both are true was monogamy a part of the indian culture before it was imposed upon them by christianity uh diversity [Music] sometimes uh the the common myth is that native americans were all polygamous right and that uh the men would have multiple wives if you read the accounts of a lot of the catholic missionaries that's the aversion you would get and yet polygamy was probably the most common social practice but it was very seldom a historical reality many cultures would allow a man to have multiple wives assuming that her family whoever the next wife was would agree to the match and on the condition that he could care for all of his wives sufficiently which very few people in a community could do typically only the chief and so if a person was allowed to have multiple wives it's really the chief has the possibility of having multiple wives and just like for kings and queens getting married quite often those multiple wives were ways to bring communities together or to solidify political alliances most native american cultures most native american people practiced what we would call serial monogamy so you are married you have one spouse and that is your spouse until such time as this union is dissolved usually by either party and then both parties are free to go on and take another spouse so it was one spouse at a time and typically both men and women had the power to dissolve that union for any reason could you tell us something about burial practices sure um most native american cultures have some sort of way to deal with the remains of the dead after since neolithic uh cultures most human beings treat our dead with respect it's one of the sources that we cite as evidence of some sort of belief in something after this because we treat our dead as though the way we treat them matters most native american cultures did bury their dead we know around here a lot of native cultures created uh burial mounds some cultures did that others would bury their great their dead in cemeteries others would cremate some would actually expose their dead on scaffolding allowing the body to deteriorate until it was simply bones and a familial a friendly clan would then strip the bones of its remaining flesh um clean them and then present them to the tribe who's dead it come who's dead we're talking about they would then take this nice clean bundle and then enter it in a charnel house a family house of bones so it varies from group to group and often i my guess is that it tends to base be based on the climate right around here we did the exposing on the scaffold thing scaffolding thing well have you ever tried to dig during the winter right it's a lot easier to expose the bones over the course of winter and then when you can actually dig that's when you take the bones and you deter them in the southwest didn't really matter so you take the the dead you wrap them up you stick them in the ground any time of year and you get essentially drying out mummification but they're all going to have some sort of burial right and beginning after the 1800s native american cultures start to um share a practice that was originated within the sioux and starts to become a little more common called ghost keeping their lack actually allows you to evoke the spirit of the recently deceased and keep it with you for the next year so imagine when someone dies and you have things that you wish you could have told them while they were alive but you never had the chance or you felt that you weren't able to truly treat them the way that they deserved while they were alive this practice of ghost keeping which becomes more and more common you can find them in most cultures today allows you another year to say those things that you wish you could have said and to show that person that respect and that love that they needed in this life so they can freely move on to what comes next yeah more questions oh yeah sorry in the sweat lodges what would be the difference between the male and the female sweat lodge in terms of practice nothing the sweat lodge is a ritual as well as a sacred space the earliest we can find is related to the sioux culture but again in the 1800s as native cultures start to come into increasing contact we start to see a greater diffusion and commonality of some of their practices including the sweat lodge sweat lodge is this big dome that you go into and yes what um it's a big dome uh there's a heated stones on the inside a fire on the outside to heat those stones you bring in the hot stones you pour water on it it steams gets really hot and then to make things better you start to also pass around a pipe after a period of time and there is no defined period of time there will be a series of prayers the various powers of each direction will be evoked and granted thanksgiving and the hope is that through this process of sweating and smoking and giving each of the spirits their due you will be purified of any spiritual contaminations and made ready for whatever you're asking to do next it was a preliminary exercise before what you would go on a vision quest or before you do a sun dance or before you do anything else and both men and women could do those something else whether vision quest or sundance but if you're sitting around sweating um it might be seen as inappropriate to be doing that in mixed gendered company so you might get a man in a a man in a woman's sweat lodge okay how many tribes practice the sun dance do you know um much like the uh sweat lodge it was first found in a sioux culture but the term su now refers to dozens hundreds of subgroups including the dakota and the lakota with dozens and hundreds of subgroups in each of those and in the 1800s during this westward migration the sundance as well as the circle dance and the ghost dance were religious movements that started to spread across cultural lines as something that different peoples could do together to build a sense of commonality between groups begin to build a sense of shared identity so whereas before i was lakota and you were apache as we do this ritual we start to recognize that yeah we might be lakota and apache but we're both indian and we have something in common so the sundance started to proliferate across cultures it was the sundance that was most strictly targeted during that ban period and was hounded out of existence as far as white overseers were concerned and of course in the reawakening of native american identity and vitality in the 20th century the sundance was seized by a lot of groups many of which never practiced it before as a way to sort of reclaim that native american pride so hard to say can you tell us something about the coming of age practices in the various indian tribes sure these will differ greatly from culture to culture nearly every native american culture that i can think of has a male equivalence has a male coming-of-age ceremony when boys become men most would have a female equivalent at least for women for the men it could include your first successful hunt a boy when he was becoming close to age among the osage would be given a bow of bow and arrow and whenever he killed his first animal that was when it was recognized that he became a man and a huge feast was held for him back in town and then another feast would be held every time he killed a different species which is evidence that sometimes religion is just a good excuse to have a party among other cultures the pueblo i'll mention them again when a man a boy starts to exhibit male interests then he moves off from the house of his mother and father and moves in to the bachelor pad it's a a place for single adult men to live and there once he initially arrives he will begin to be taught those things that men need to know that includes of course the obvious things that men need to know uh as well as the ceremonial teachings now that you are an adult member now it's time for us to tell you those things that you didn't know about as a kid those additional teachings the ways that we relate to the spirits that now only an adult is ready for and then after receiving these teachings the first time he engaged in a ceremony that's when he became a man very different for men for most women if there's a ceremony it tended to take place the first time a woman demonstrated biologically that she was no longer a girl the coming of her first menses and in most native cultures when that happens there's going to be a place on the outskirts of town where she will go and be secluded with the elder women of the community i can't really tell you much about what happens there within history it doesn't get recorded only women are allowed to go into that hut men are not most anthropologists have been men what happens in that secret according to the men in sorry what happens in that hut according to the men in the village we don't know they go there and the women teach her the things that she needs to know as a woman i don't know what that is because i'm not a woman and so it doesn't get recorded by missionaries or later anthropologists and today if you are accepted enough by the tribe to be allowed to be a part of it then you respect the tribe enough not to reveal what takes place in there so she gets secluded for about a week when it's done she'll go through a purification bath usually and then pre-presented to the village all dolled up and dressed up as only a woman can be and presented as a legitimate potential marriage partner okay i'm coming sorry about that i have uh i guess three questions about effigy mounds um first of all who decided which ones were to be burial mounds second of all who decided which animal shape they were going to use and third did they get it all done the large one said they get it all done in one season or they have to come back we don't know um we talk about native american culture uh and effigy mountain cultures but the plural there needs to be emphasized here we can see effigy mounds and fg mountains if you didn't know it's a very wisconsin thing wisconsin and adjoining states we are the place where those mounds get built the best guess is that some of the cultures that were already here underwent a dramatic transformation when another culture from the south moved up in the territory then a bunch of cultures that had previously not really had a relationship together suddenly started to grow together think of themselves as one people as part of this new sort of cultural identity there was a religious component too it seemed to be as much a religious movement as a cultural movement and this manifested in the creation of fg mounds whereas before they were just building these little hemisphere or cone-shaped burial mounds suddenly you get the creation of these much more elaborate effigy mounds mound the shapes of something we still don't know why we don't know what these images mean some have theorized that these uh mounds represent different clans clam clan totems and that the clan the person perhaps buried inside might be a member of that clan except not all fg mounds have people buried inside and if a given culture had as much variety in terms of clan makeup as their making of mounds would indicate one group of people might end up making 15 different animal shapes and if one community had that many subdivisions it seems very unlikely that that community would have enough solidarity enough togetherness to last very long probably not clan symbols they could be inspired by a vision maybe if you had a vision that you needed a mound made of this amount made in the shape of a hawk you would have it in the hawk maybe it was inspired by something about the local vegetation it could be some sort of attempt to balance the cosmos it seems that areas in the wisconsin geography right areas in the eastern part of the state tend to have more water-related fgs lizards snakes water spirits and that tends to be areas that tend to be [Music] wetter yeah lots of lakes get my geography right more lakes that way and yet whenever you have in any sort of site some sort of water spirit you also have balance in that site something from the upper realm something like a bird so were these effigy mounds ways of trying to evoke the spiritual powers of different realms of existence and balance them cohesively it's another theory i wrote a paper about a theory but i don't want to just you know teaching my theory as being true because um i got enough criticisms on already that apparently people don't think it is uh but the easy answer is we don't know and i don't want us to assume that that we do know yeah other questions what about tobacco and other mind-altering substances as part of their religion yes and how it found its way into our culture um contrary to [Music] what has become popular western belief uh most native american cultures did not have ethnogens um hallucinogenic substances um it's sometimes believed that every group every culture had this and it's been used by a lot of people who want to find a biological explanation for religion to say that well they were all hallucinating and religion comes from people tripping a lot um it's not the case some cultures did have hallucinogenic substances peyote as an example we found it in the central uh central america and it migrates its way up north but it was by no means a universal practice tobacco was initially found within really the mississippian culture so from the american southeast up the mississippi river and really anywhere the mississippian culture connected and that includes wisconsin they had tobacco um and if tobacco doesn't seem like a mind-altering substance to you they were smoking what we call nicotiana rustica which is the indigenous pure strain of tobacco which is has one sorry two to three times the nicotine of our current strand plus it wasn't being filtered or cut you smoke that and sure enough you can get an experience native ameri smoking tobacco was a part of some native american cultures but not all as native cultures come to contact and begin to share practices and beliefs so too does the practice of smoking tobacco disseminate today most cultures have tobacco as a part of the religion why it is seen as a offering that all spirits find pleasing so this spirit might like corn as an offering and this spirit might like sweet breads but all spirits like tobacco it's a it's an offering like incense or wine and other cultures that would seem pleasing to all the supernatural beings mencludes also human beings the smoking of tobacco makes spirits agreeable makes spirits happy and so if we as a community were to smoke tobacco then it would make our spirits agreeable make us more easy to find agreement and consensus among us but remember i told you that there was no difference that there was no indigenous word for religion so the smoking of tobacco was often something done as preparation before a ritual but a ritual is any sort of thing done in a formal manner so that would include a vision quest or a ceremonial dance or a formal negotiation which is why you get the idea of the peace pipe and the smoking of tobacco before peace negotiations that's the easy answer most native cultures that smoke it today uh don't smoke it straight they make various mixes mixing tobacco with what's called kanikanik as well as well as various barks like sweetgum bark that add flavors as well as have spiritual relevance the relevance of course will vary from culture to culture so i think we'll leave the q and a part there but dr gaino can answer questions if anybody would like to ask questions but please join me today in thanking dr michael gaino thank you

Channel: UWW Continuing Education

Views: 30,200

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Id: fwUKfRdDb70

Length: 57min 49sec (3469 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021