The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian

This text is a selection of studies originally prepared for journals and conferences. The chapter topics address selected and interrelated perspectives from cultural anthropology and the history of religions. These topics then demonstrate how Native American spiritual heritages are situated within the context of world religious traditions. All the chapters elaborate on this central concern by means of a wide range of specific examples drawn from selected Native American cultures. It is a fundamental and universal characteristic of Native American cultures that "religion" is not a separate category of activity or experience that is divorced from culture or society. Rather, religion is pervasively present and is in complex interrelationships with all aspects of the peoples' lives. Each chapter focuses upon specific examples of this integration of religion, or the sacred, with daily life in the context of a particular tribal group. These fundamental principles, expressed in different cultural contexts through differing formal expression, not only provide a thread of unity throughout the book, but collectively, also represent a model of the multiple dimensions of the sacred which come together in an organic interrelated manner in any one Native American culture