If we really think about what we usually mean when we say "primitive," Native Americans are far less primitive than what passes for normal in today's mainstream

Last week I wrote about some of the biggest challenges facing contemporary Native Americans, especially those living in urban communities in the midst of the larger North American mainstream.

At their “Ask a Native American” talk hosted by the Interfaith Leadership Council, Sue and Chris Franklin also gave some personal narratives and basic teachings of their tribes that help demonstrate why the heritage of Native people is worth fighting for and preserving despite these heartbreaking challenges.

One of the many fascinating takeaways I got from their presentation was the idea of “blood memory.” As Sue described it, tribal members inherit memory passed down through the generations, which can still be seen in the intuitive behaviors of youth in the Native community who do certain things without having to be taught—such as respecting and assisting elders.

Outside the Native community, any kind of blood memory has long since been bred out of most people. If a person represents two or more ethnicities, as I do, whose blood memory would we have? Probably no one’s, because there’s no way for potentially-conflicting teachings to not cancel each other out at some point.

This is why mainstream North Americans can’t relate to (and many have trouble believing) in this phenomenon, and why they don’t understand why trying to forcibly mainstream Native children is so traumatic. (Imagine a psychic, emotional, and spiritual equivalent of cutting off their feet and telling them to learn how to walk as well as before on just the bare ends of their ankles. Yes, it really is that bad; I’m not just being overly dramatic.)

There are a lot of “romantic” stereotypes about Native Americans, most of which include depictions of them as “primitive” and worshiping trees and animals as some form of nature-based paganism.

The truth is that Native people are monotheist, just in a different way than Christians, Muslims, and Jews are. Native people’s reverence for different aspects of the One Creator, by different names, is more comparable to how Hindus (another group often misunderstood to be pagan) worship. The traditional Anishinabek greeting “Boojoo”—which loosely translates as “Are you here?”—is even reminiscent of the concept of “Namaste,” which is acknowledging the presence of the divine in others we meet.

Native people view Creator more as The Ancestor, and humanity as Creator’s grandchildren. As I've always seen it, Native people's parental view of Creator seems to foster a more familial and love-based spirituality than the king-god of European monotheism that I've always been so ambivalent about.

Native traditions vary by tribe, and have always been far more sophisticated than history books and mainstream North American thinking have ever given them credit for. By comparison, in fact, much of our mainstream is actually far more primitive. While our modern society is based on profit, greed, getting ahead at the expense of other people, ruthless competition, the exploitation and derision of women, and having a sort of love-hate ambivalence toward the next generation, Native people start with a concept of power that equates with responsibility, not with stand-alone status or advantage over other people.

Wealth is also viewed as a source of great responsibility, not something to be hoarded and used to make us feel more important as human beings than those who have less material resources.

If you’d come to this continent “5,000 years ago,” Sue said, “children were the most precious resources, and women were held in very high regard,” compared with what we see now—“and you [mainstream society] have the nerve to call us savages.”

The subject of North America’s indigenous people is so dear to my heart that I want to do one more post on what I learned at this presentation, rather than try to cram it all in this one or cut a lot out. Thus, I’ll do a third post within the next week or two. This next post will go into more detail about spirituality, how the plight of contemporary Native people is not as simple as just “blaming” white people, and helping to clear up some more of the dumb misconceptions we amazingly still need to put effort into refuting even today.

Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

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Image: "Bracelet from John," by Karla Joy Huber, early 2000s; colored pencil