A Native American Quest

Many have questioned how harmoniously did the original Americans actually live with their continent. Did they not cause any harm whatsoever to the prairie lands or forest? Some archeologists and historians contend that the ancient Anasazi people, for instance, of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico created an artificial drought by denuding the mesa tops of timber for pueblo construction to lower the water table.

Others have stated that the crowded living conditions of the ancient apartment buildings such as Pueblo Bonito and Casa Riconada resembled those of modern day urban dwellers.

It has been noted by historians that the Plains Indians actually lit prairie fires to stampede bison herds indesired directions for the kill. When hundreds of bison jumped over the cliffs to their death, were all of the dead animals used for hides and meat? Presumably the answer to the question is no, even though most Plains tribes had over 250 uses of the bison from soup ladles made from hip bones to flank steaks.

Perhaps such observations help justify our own industrialized society's pollution of the air, water, and land all around us. We can feel a little better about asbestos particles in Lake Superior, traces of plutonium dust in and around Rocky Flats, Colorado, and acid rains pelting seemingly pristine lakes of upstate New York.
If American Indians were careless about the land and water, then why should we fret? All societies must have had the equivalent of toxic waste dumps, right?

There is, however, a rather important qualification that needs to be made regarding the above argument. As a general rule industrialized, technetronic societies avoid harmonious relationships with the natural environment (unless too many people begin to complain), and as a general rule Native American cultures from eastern woodlands to the desert Southwest attempt (not always successfully) to maintain a blance.

How can we be sure that this qualification holds water? Let's look at the first side of the coin--modern industrial society's relationship with the environment. While it is true that we do have a Sierra Club, a Wilderness Society, a Nature Conservatory etc., they exist because the environment has become endangered. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 because the high Sierra mountains were threatened by disastrous mining techniques that stripped the top soil with high pressure water hoses.

Conservation groups are indeed as American as apple pie, but so too is acid rain, the Love Canal, oil spills in the Prince William Sound and an even larger more menacing one in the Gulf of Mexico. Laissez-faire industrialized growth, urban sprawl, toxic and radioactive pollution are acceptible risks in a technetronic society. Conservation groups have been called "Nature Nazis" by proponents of perpetual industrial expansion. If there is oil, copper, magnesium, or titanium on the slopes of the sacred San Francisco Peaks of northern Arizona or even a formerly-held sacred mountain in China, the hell with the mountain.

Let's look at the flip side of the coin--Native American cultures and their relationships with the environment. While it is true that earlier and current tribes have modified their local environments including coal mining for bucks, their basic ceremonial life still inculcates a respect for the flora and fauna around them. And many of those ceremonial rites exist to this day whether in upstate New York or northern Arizona.

Take for example the hunting rites of the Pueblo people refrerred to in such books as Frank Waters' The Man Who Killed the Deer or Peggy Pond Church's House at Otowi Bridge. The hunter who pursues the deer first prays to the deer's spirit that it will let itself be killed for human nourishment. Once the deer has been killed, corn pollen is spread around its body. The human, in other words, must be reverent toward its prey.

The Navajo believe that a natural harmony or hozhyq can be maintained or restored only through a ceremony called hozhqqjii. The delicate balance of the seasons, of rain and sun, night and day are all part of hozhq. Interestingly human beings must play a role in hozhq through reverent ceremony.

The Seneca Nation of upstate New York still practice the ceremonial rite of praying to the four sacred directions for a harmonious relationship with Earth Mother in order that she may provide people with beans, squash, and corn. Without reverent ceremony the human being puts himself (including BP petroleum engineers) at odds with a planet that houses, feeds and clothes him. The Earth is always remembered.

It is true that humans can fail in living up to their spiritual teachings and create what Navajo people call hackxq or imbalance. But the point is that an industrial society does not center itself on maintaining hozhq so much as maintaining a constant growth rate even if it may cause hochxq.

If Native American traditional values are fading (Arapaho elders, for instance, as recently as 1990 voted against the ressurection of the women's porcupine quill society), it may be time for us to reassess our relationship with a living biosphere called Earth. We need to develop an environmental think tank with the participation of tribal elders.