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Native american history and european settlers
Native american history and european settlers
The life of native americans after the europeans came
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One might not understand what makes one keep moving forward day after day. Nobody gets it unless they have lived in the footsteps of another. Ask any Native American. They have lived a life of others judging and misunderstanding and if they haven't their ancestors have. The Native Americans pass stories down generation by generation so surely they have heard what it was like to be misunderstood. They believe differently than other cultures, yet not one is alike. They have a very complicated and hard to understand system when it comes to their views. The way they view, believe and run their system is never fully understood unless one has grown up with the Native American culture. The religious culture of these people is what holds their tribes and their lives together.
Historically Native American religions are very diverse between tribes. Most are unique to their individual tribe. Others are widely spread throughout many tribes but still encounter differences between them. Native religions, much like other religious groups have sacred sites. These sacred locations are considered sacred not only by the Natives themselves but by the American government who has now also named them protected.
The Native American Church is considered to be the most popular of all the Native American religions. This church teaches the Peyote religion. Originally the religion started in Mexico and was established in the tribes in the state of Oklahoma. The Peyote religion is the most widely spread of all the Native American religions. Although it does vary between the different tribes but the main teaching does stay consistent throughout them all. It is used to communicate with the spirit world and is also used as a medicine.
Native American religion...
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...ine Wheel can be interpreted in many ways, for example the stages of life, the seasons, and elements of nature.
Although the Native Americans have a complicated system it is sure an interesting one. With an in depth culture there is no end to the learning of it. It is one that no one but the Native American themselves can fully understand. Native Americans have a special connection with themselves, the world around them and the land under our feet. That is a very special value to have. They are strong people and they would not be that way without their culture and without their beliefs.
Works Cited
http://www.mormonteachings.com/ http://www.catholic.com/tracts/distinctive-beliefs-of-the-mormon-church http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=429652 http://carm.org/mormonism http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/mormon.htm
http://www.mormonteachings.com/
The Indigenous people of America are called Native Americans or often referred to as “Indians”. They make up about two percent of the population in the United States and some of them still live in reservations. They once lived freely in the wilderness without any sort of influence or exposure from the Europeans who later came in the year of 1492, and therefore their culture is very different from ours.. In the following essay we will discover some differences between the religious beliefs of the Native American Iroquois and Christianity to see if the culture and ways of living have an effect on the view of religion, but we will also get to know some similarities between them. I am going to be focusing on the Iroquois, which are the northeastern Native Americans who are historically important and powerful.
The Pueblo culture contended many fragments to their culture that varied from the Spaniards Culture. The Native Americans were nature reliant they received all their necessities from the earth. They not only used the land but also thanked the earth. They included over three hundred spirit or gods that the pueblos prayed to for various different reasons, they called them Kachinas. Some of the spirits were Sun god, the rain god, star gods, the wind god and many other divinities. The Natives adore the Kachinas with praise for good crops, good health, family, homes, protection and various other things every day. Customs for the pueblos included rituals to heal problems such as disease in people who are sick, women who are not infertile and many other issues in the tribe. They contained Kivas; kivas were an underground compartment custom for secretive ceremonial practices. The purposes for Kivas were for the Pueblos to get closer to the spirit world. They thought that everything living came from the inferior part of the land. Pu...
The Native American’s way of living was different from the Europeans. They believed that man is ruled by respect and reverence for nature and that nature is an ancestor or relative. The Native American’s strongly belie...
Religion played a very important role in both Puritan and Native American society, though their ideologies differed greatly. According to Puritan beliefs, God had chosen a select number of people to join him in heaven as his elect. The Native Americans, on the other hand, believed that everyone was the same; no one was better than anyone else. As Sitting Bull once said, "Each man is good in [the Great Spirit's] sight. (Quotes from our Native Past). This theory was in direct conflict with the Puritan's view. The means through which the beliefs of these two groups were carried on also differed greatly. The Puritans had their Bible which detailed their entire religion and held the answers to all possible questions. The Native Americans on the other hand relied on oral transmission of their theology. Thus, while the Puritans had a constant place to turn to when they wanted to figure out what they believed, Native Americans were forced to fill in the blanks between stories they had heard when it came to their basic ideals. This aspect made them both unable to relate to one another. The most prominent difference between the two religions were their gods. The Puritans believed in one God and one God only. The Native Americans, though also worshipping their own almighty "Great Spirit," took further reverence for all living (and once living) things, worshipping the trees and their ancestors as well as their omnipotent Tirawa (or Wakan Tanka). The Puritans, holding all aspects of the Bible literal and as divine mandate, saw this worship of beings other than their God as idolatry (which was in clear violation of the first commandment). Therefore, the Puritans held the Native American society as a society wallowing in sin.
In this way the religion practiced by the Native Americans was taken as contradictions to Christianity. The natives were informed that Christianity was designed to be an eternal rule of significance and a means from which they could use to return to God from their religions that had deviated (Eliot par. 3). Through sermons given by Whitfield, the minds of the natives were engaged in religion and making religion the subject of most of their discussions. They embraced all the opportunities to hear what was been taught on Christianity. The Christian revivals were attended by the young and old alike (Edwards par.
Many Native American civilizations are well known. However, many stereotypes are created based on the belief that all Native Americans were similar. There is one native tribe that has the most controversy revolving around it. That was the culture of the Karankawas. Until just recently most known information came from words of mouth, and there were many distorted views on this great nation.
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
Duane Champagne in Social Change and Cultural Continuity Among Native Nations explains that there has never been one definitive world view that comprises any one Native American culture, as there is no such thing as one “Native community” (2007:10). However, there are certain commonalities in the ways of seeing and experiencing the world that many Native communities and their religions seem to share.
Considering historical evidence, the notion: Native –Americans was not the first inhabitant of America is a complete false. For centuries, history kept accurate and vivid accounts of the first set of people who domiciled the western hemisphere. Judging by those records, below are the first set of Native-American people who inhabited America before the arrival of another human race; the Iroquois: The Iroquois of Native Americans was one of the tribes that lived in America before other people came. Based on historical evidence, it is believed that the Native Americans came from Asia way back during the Ice Age through a land bridge of the Bering Strait. When the Europeans first set foot in America, there were about 10 million Native Americans
We may hear of a concept from another culture and try to make sense of it within our own culture, which evidently creates misunderstandings. We must understand how our language and culture is how we organize the world and attempt to overcome that and see the world organized from another cultures point of view and by doing so this will start the process of understanding Native American thought and thus place their philosophy beside westerns. To stress the importance of language, another example is used by Anne Waters when she states “hearing is being” meaning that our language has trained us to only hear certain sounds, or in other words, what we hear is determined by our language and culture. This stresses their influence on our lives. As mentioned above, Native Americans believe in non-propositional knowledge (such as dreams) and we have just mentioned the need to recognize assumptions and avoid them. Therefore it is extremely relevant what …. Said when stating how obscured it is that Native Americans beliefs are superstitions and
advantage of the rich black soil for farming. Corn was their main source of food,
Over the history of our country Native Americas have long since been oppressed in trying to practice their Native Religions freely, and openly. It wasn’t until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) of 1978, which “acknowledged the unique nature of Native spirituality” (Limb & Hodge, 2008, p. 618). This law stated that the policy of the United States would be to protect and preserve the right of Native Americans to believe and practice their traditional religions. This was the first major step in the United States history that sought to protect Native Americans and their rights to self-expression of spirituality.
In our culture, power is something that is constantly fought over and it causes struggles in all social classes. We see power as economics, military, and religion, but in reality, these are all systems of authority (John Trudell). The natives see power as something that is only trusted with the Creator. Focusing the power within the Creator allows everything else ranging from a little mouse to a human being to be equals. This is a benefit of having the Creator or Great Mystery instead of a dogma like most religions. The Great Mystery makes it so a person has to worship everything that surrounds them so they cannot focus on pleasing a certain set of rules. Also, since everyone is equal in their beliefs, taking the native view regarding creation could diminish the amount of wars and problems throughout the world. In common creationism, God created two people and there is a separation of power even between man and woman from the very start. The natives also do not believe in having a “holy book” and pass their stories on through oral traditions. They believe the books take away a personal level from the stories; by passing them down orally, people are able to add their own twists and make it more relatable to the time it is needed. Having the cultural change would make people communicate more about important things than having pointless conversations. This would force
Native spirituality and Catholics both have different sacred stories/ scriptures. Native spirituality tell all their stories by word of mouth that have been passed down from the elders over many
The American Indians Between 1609 To 1865. Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who spoke hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large, terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper.