The instructions should show that it is relatively simple – define in your own words. I do not require a very formal paper – intelligent and concise is what I am asking for without sounding too colloquial. I do not require a minimum number of pages. 

*NOTE: the term paper worksheet is only a guideline; you can use this as the actual template for your paper, use parts of it, OR write something similar based on what you have learned so far. 

*The paper needs to clearly demonstrate your active participation in the reading, understanding, and learning of the material.

Term Paper 1

American Indian Religion & Philosophy

Time, Space and People

Critique and Analyze the material, then Support your position.

– Introduction

· Is there one religious view/practice that all American Indian groups adhere to?

· What did you already know about American Indian religion and philosophy?

· What did you expect or hope to learn?

– Time

· How does history play a significant role in what takes place within an American Indian religion/philosophy? Consider federal law, role of the military, western religions.

· Give examples of American Indian religious practices that reflect a specific time period.

– Space

· Give examples of how geography is significant in religious practices?

· There are examples of how a Native view of the land might differ from other people. Describe this conflict and how it is initiated or how it perpetuates. (Refer to the film: In the Light of Reverence)

· Describe or interpret how the origin stories (those in iLearn) might give us information about the people and their environment.

– People

· Describe how people are involved in their ceremony (either as an individual, or as a group; you can describe a specific ceremony, the preparation of the ceremony, or how it is conducted).

· What do you consider to be the purpose or expected outcome of their ceremonies? You can choose a general theme or a case-by-case study.

– Conclusion

· What do you now understand about American Indian religion and philosophy?

· Compare your knowledge of American Indian religion and philosophy to another major religious practice and/or philosophy.

NOTE: Use terms from the Glossary

ANTHROPOLOGICAL Glossary

Animism – a belief that natural phenomena such as rocks, trees, thunder, or celestial bodies have life or divinity.

Anthropocentric – the idea that humans are the most important beings in the universe.

balanced reciprocity – is a direct exchange where the two parties involved seek to arrive at a mutually acceptable price or exchange for goods or services.

class stratification – where members of a society are ranked from higher to lower based on wealth, prestige, position, or education.

colonialism – forced change in which one culture, society, or nation dominates another.

comparative methods – analyzing data about cultures to learn and explain patterns of similarity and difference.

cultural relativism – understanding the ways of other cultures and not judging these practices according to one’s own cultural ways.

cultural transmission – how culture is passed on through learning from one generation to another. Also referred to as enculturation or socialization.

culture – The learned patterns of behavior and thought that help a group adapt to it’s surroundings.

deviance – to not follow the norms of society.

enculturation – the process of learning one’s own culture, also called socialization.

ethnocentrism – judging other cultures by the standards of your own, which you believe to be superior.

ethnography – description of a culture, usually based on the method of participant observation.

extinction – when a culture dies out. Often the people die out too. Some may become peasants or pass into contemporary society.

fieldwork – living among a group of people for the purpose of learning about their culture.

hegemonic – the use of power, usually by those controlling the meta or master narrative against the other

holistic – no dimension of culture can be understood in isolation, cultures are integrated wholes.

humanism – concern for human welfare, dignity and values.

ideal – what people think the situation should be.

imperialism – economic control gained through the corporate organization of nation states.

information society – a society integrated by complex communication networks that rapidly develop and exchange information.

kinesics – body, facial, hand, and arm movements that are used to communicate.

matriarchy – where a mother figure and women have authority.

matrilineal – descent traced exclusively through the female line.

metaphor – application of a word or phrase to an object or concept in order to suggest a comparison.

modernization – the process by which cultures are forced to accept traits from outside.

multiculturalism – stressing the importance of different cultures, races, and ethnicities.

oligarchy – the ruling class. Usually a small group of wealthy individuals.

one-world culture – a popular belief that the future will bring development of a single homogeneous world culture through links created by modern communication, transportation, and trade.

origin story – description of how the culture came into being.

pacification – extending the authority of national government over formerly autonomous people whether by force or persuasion.

patriarchy – where a father figure and males have authority.

patrilineal – tracing kinship, inheritance, power through the male line.

personalness – refers to how well a person knows the other with whom an exchange is being made. Personal means that the other is well known, where as impersonal reflects lack of knowledge about the other. See reciprocity.

power – the ability to influence the actions of others.

qualitative methods – rich descriptions of cultural situations obtained from interviewing, participant observation, and collection of oral and textual materials. Ethnographies are reports from qualitative research.

quantitative methods – numerical tabulations and statistical comparisons made possible by systematic surveys, observations, or analysis of records. Data are used to test hypotheses and identify the strength of patterns observed using qualitative methods.

reciprocity – a mutual or cooperative interchange of favors or privileges, especially the exchange of rights or privileges of trade between individuals or groups as in the transfer of goods or services between two or more individuals or groups. Also see balanced, generalized, and negative reciprocity.

religion – a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural power.

sacred – things and actions set apart as religious or spiritual which are entitled to reverence.

science – systematically acquired knowledge that is verifiable.

secular – things not regarded as religious or spiritual.

social stratification – arranging the members of a society into a pattern of superior and inferior ranks.

subsistence – the way by which a culture obtains its food.

syncretism – blending traits from two different cultures to form a new trait. Also called fusion.

theory – several related propositions that explain some domain of inquiry. Also called a school or paradigm.

urbanization – the process by which more and more people come to live in cities.

values – what people think is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable.

wealth – the net gain in material well-being from economic activity. Wealth is measured according to the items of value in a given culture.

https://sfsu.kanopy.com/video/ethnic-dance-around-world

https://nvinterviews.nlm.nih.gov/interviews/

http://www.pbs.org/circleofstories/voices/index.html

https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/Legends-AB.html

In the Light of Reverence

In the Light of Reverence – Christopher McLeod and Malinda Maynor – Behind the Lens – POV | PBS

2 mins

Vine Deloria Jr. – “Time of its Own” – Clashing Worldviews at Devils Tower

5:03 mins

Hopi Messenger – Thomas Banyacya, Sr. (1909-1999)

11:52 mins

Caleen Sisk on Winnemem Wintu Mountain Spirits

4:40 mins

Winnemem vs. New Agers on Mt. Shasta

7:28 mins

Native American Legends

The Creation Story

An Iroquois Legend

In the beginning, the world was not as we know it now. It was a water world inhabited only by animals and creatures of the air who could survive without land.

Up above, the Sky World was quite different. Human-type beings lived there with infinite types of plants and animals to enjoy.

In the Sky World, there was a Tree of Life that was very special to the people of the Sky World. They knew that it grew at the entrance to the world below and forbade anyone to tamper with the Tree. One woman who was soon to give birth was curious about the Tree and convinced her brother to uproot the Tree.

Beneath the Tree was a great hole. The woman peered from the edge into the hole and suddenly fell off the edge. As she was falling she grasped at the edge and clutched in her hand some of the earth from the Sky World. As she fell, the birds of the world below were disturbed and alerted to her distress. The birds responded and gathered a great many of their kind to break her fall and cradle her to the back of a great sea turtle. The creatures of the water believed that she needed land to live on, so they set about to collect some for her. They dove to the great depths of the world’s oceans to gather earth to make her a place to live. Many of the animals tried to gather the earth from the ocean floor, only the muskrat was successful. With only a small bit of earth brought onto turtle’s back from his small paws, Turtle Island began to grow.

The Sky Woman soon gave birth to a daughter on Turtle Island. The daughter grew fast. There were no man-beings on Turtle Island, but a being known as the West Wind married the daughter of Sky Woman.

Soon the daughter of Sky Woman gave birth to Twins. One was born the natural way, and he was called the Right-Handed Twin. The other was born in a way that caused the death of the mother. He was called the Left-Handed Twin. When their mother died, their grandmother, Sky Woman, placed the fistful of earth that she grasped from the edge of the Sky World, and placed it on her daughter’s grave. The earth carried special seeds from the Sky World that were nourished by the earth over her daughter. So from the body of her daughter came the Sacred Tobacco, Strawberry and Sweetgrass. We call these Kionhekwa. The Life Givers.

The Right and Left-Handed Twins were endowed with special creative powers. The Right-Handed Twin created gentle hills, beautiful smelling flowers, quiet brooks, butterflies and numerous creatures, plants and earth formations. His brother the Left-Handed Twin made snakes, thorns on rose bushes, thunder and lightning and other more disturbing attributes of today’s world. Together, they created man and his many attributes. The Right-Handed Twin believed in diplomacy and conflict resolution. The Left-Handed Twin believed in conflict as resolution. They were very different, but all that they created is an integral part of this Earth’s Creation.

Their Grandmother, Sky Woman, now came to the end of her life. When she died, the Twins fought over her body and pulled it apart, throwing her head into the sky. As part of the Sky World, there her head remained to shine upon the world as Grandmother Moon. The Twins could not live together without fighting. They agreed to dwell in different realms of the earth. The Right-Handed Twin continued to live in the daylight and the Left-Handed Twin became a dweller of the night. Both of them continue their special duties to their Mother the Earth.

Native American Legends

Creation of Man

A Miwok Legend

After Coyote had completed making the world, he began to think about creating man. He called a council of all the animals. The animals sat in a circle, just as the Indians do, with Lion at the head, in an open space in the forest.

On Lion’s right was Grizzly Bear; next Cinnamon Bear; and so on to Mouse, who sat at Lion’s left.

Lion spoke first. Lion said he wished man to have a terrible voice, like himself, so that he could frighten all animals. He wanted man also to be well covered with hair, with fangs in his claws, and very strong teeth.

Grizzly Bear laughed. He said it was ridiculous for any one to have such a voice as Lion, because when he roared he frightened away the very prey for which he was searching. But he said man should have very great strength; that he should move silently, but very swiftly; and he should be able to seize his prey without noise.

Buck said man would look foolish without antlers. And a terrible voice was absurd, but man should have ears like a spider’s web, and eyes like fire.

Mountain Sheep said the branching antlers would bother man if he got caught in a thicket. If man had horns rolled up, so that they were like a stone on each side of his head, it would give his head weight enough to butt very hard.

When it came Coyote’s turn, he said the other animals were foolish because they each wanted man to be just like themselves. Coyote was sure he could make a man who would look better than Coyote himself, or any other animal. Of course he would have to have four legs, with five fingers. Man should have a strong voice, but he need not roar all the time with it.

And he should have feet nearly like Grizzly Bear’s, because he could then stand erect when he needed to. Grizzly Bear had no tail, and man should not have any. The eyes and ears of Buck were good, and perhaps man should have those.

Then there was Fish, which had no hair, and hair was a burden much of the year. So Coyote thought man should not wear fur. And his claws should be as long as the Eagle’s, so that he could hold things in them. But no animal was as cunning and crafty as Coyote, so man should have the wit of Coyote.

Then Beaver talked. Beaver said man would have to have a tail, but it should be broad and flat, so he could haul mud and sand on it. Not a furry tail, because they were troublesome on account of fleas.

Owl said man would be useless without wings.

But Mole said wings would be folly. Man would be sure to bump against the sky. Besides, if he had wings and eyes both, he would get his eyes burned out by flying too near the sun. But without eyes, he could burrow in the soft, cool earth where he could be happy.

Mouse said man needed eyes so he could see what he was eating. And nobody wanted to burrow in the damp earth. So the council broke up in a quarrel.

Then every animal set to work to make a man according to his own ideas. Each one took a lump of earth and modeled it just like himself. All but Coyote, for Coyote began to make the kind of man he had talked of in the council.

It was late when the animals stopped work and fell asleep. All but Coyote, for Coyote was the most cunning of all the animals, and he stayed awake until he had finished his model. He worked hard all night. When the other animals were fast asleep he threw water on the lumps of earth, and so spoiled the models of the other animals. But in the morning he finished his own and gave it life long before the others could finish theirs. Thus man was made by Coyote.

Native American Oral Narrative

Contributing Editor: Andrew Wiget

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues

Some very important themes evolve from this literature. Native American views of the
world as represented in these mythologies contrast strongly with Euro-American
perspectives. Recognizing this is absolutely essential for later discussion of the differences
between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans over questions of land, social
organization, religion, and so on. In other words, if one can identify these fundamental
differences through the literature very early on, then later it becomes easier to explain the
differences in outlook between Native American peoples and Anglo-American peoples that
often lead to tragic consequences.

If culture is a system of beliefs and values by which people organize their experience of the
world, then it follows that forms of expressive culture such as these myths should embody
the basic beliefs and values of the people who create them. These beliefs and values can be
roughly organized in three areas: (1) beliefs about the nature of the physical world; (2)
beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior; and (3) beliefs about human nature and
the problem of good and evil.

The Zuni “Talk Concerning the First Beginning” speaks directly to the nature of the
physical world. If we look closely at the Zuni “Talk,” the story imagines the earth as
hollow, with people coming out from deep within the womb of the earth. The earth is
mother and feminine and people are created not just of the stuff of the earth, but also from
the earth. They are born into a particular place and into a particular environment. In the
course of this long history, imagined as a search for the center (a point of balance and
perfection), they undergo significant changes in their physical appearance, in their social
behavior, in their social organization and in their sense of themselves. By the time they
have arrived at Zuni, which they call the center of the world, they have become pretty
much like their present selves. It is especially important to follow the notes here with this
selection and with the Navajo selection. Both of these stories talk about transformations in
the physical world. The world is populated by beings who are also persons like humans; all
of the world is animated, and there are different nations of beings who can communicate
with each other, who are intelligent and volitional creatures.

Both the Zuni story and the Iroquoian story of the origins of the confederacy also talk
about how society should be organized, about the importance of kinship and families, about
how society divides its many functions in order to provide for healing, for food, for
decision making, and so on. The Iroquoian confederacy was a model of Federalism for the
drafters of the Constitution, who were much impressed by the way in which the
confederacy managed to preserve the autonomy of its individual member tribes while being
able to manage effective concerted actions, as the colonists to their dismay too often found
out. The Navajo story of Changing Woman and the Lakota story of White Buffalo Calf
Pipe Woman are important illustrations not only of the role of women as culture heroes, but
also of every people’s necessity to evolve structures such as the Pipe Ceremony or the
Navajo healing rituals to restore and maintain order in the world.

The Raven and Hare narratives are stories about a Trickster figure. Tricksters are the
opposite of culture heroes. Culture heroes exist in mythology to dramatize prototypical
events and behaviors; they show us how to do what is right and how we became the people
who we are. Tricksters, on the other hand, provide for disorder and change; they enable us
to see the seemy underside of life and remind us that culture, finally, is artificial, that there
is no necessary reason why things must be the way they are. If there is sufficient motivation
to change things, Trickster provides for the possibility of such change, most often by
showing us the danger of believing too sincerely that this arbitrary arrangement we call
culture is the way things really are. When Raven cures the girl, for instance, he does so to
gain her sexual favors, and in so doing calls into question the not-always-warranted trust
that people place in healing figures like doctors. The Bungling Host story, widespread
throughout Native America, humorously illustrates the perils of overreaching the limits of
one’s identity while trying to ingratiate one’s self.

Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions

Perhaps the most important thing that needs to be done is to challenge students’ notions of
myth. When students hear the word “myth,” they succumb to the popular belief that
mythology is necessarily something that is false. This is a good place to start a discussion
about truth, inviting students to consider that there are other kinds of truth besides scientific
truth (which is what gave a bad name to mythology in the first place). Consider this
definition of myth: “The dramatic representation of culturally important truths in narrative
form.” Such a definition highlights the fact that myths represent or dramatize shared visions
of the world for the people who hold them. Myths articulate the fundamental truths about
the shape of the universe and the nature of humanity.

It is also important to look at important issues of form such as repetition. Repetition strikes
many students as boring. Repetition, however, is an aesthetic device that can be used to
create expectation. Consider the number three and how several aspects of our Euro-
American experience are organized in terms of three: the start of a race (“on your mark, get
set, go”); three sizes (small, medium, and large); the three colors of a traffic signal; and of
course, three little pigs. These are all commonplace examples, so commonplace, in fact,
that initially most students don’t think much of them. But there is no reason why we should
begin things by counting to three. We could count to four or five or seven, as respectively
the Zunis, the Chinooks, and the Hebrews did. In other words, these repetitions have an
aesthetic function: they create a sense of expectation, and when one arrives at the full
number of repetitions, a sense of completeness, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

Original Audience

The question of audience is crucial for Native American literature, in that the original
audience for the literature understands the world through its own experience much
differently than most of our students do. As a result, it’s important to reconstruct as much
of that cultural and historical context as possible for students, especially when it has a
direct bearing upon the literature. So, for instance, students need to know in discussing
Zuni material that the Zunis, Hopis, and Navajos are agricultural people and that corn and
moccasins figure prominently as symbols of life. Rain, moisture, and human beings are
imagined in terms of corn, and life is understood as an organic process that resembles a
plant growing from a seed in the ground, being raised up, harvested, and so forth.
Historically it’s important to realize too that visions of one’s community and its history

differ from culture to culture. So, for instance, the Hopi story of the Pueblo revolt imagines
the revolt as a response to a life-threatening drought that is caused by the suppression of
the native religion by the Franciscan priest. This way of understanding history is very
different from the way most of our students understand history today. Its very notion of
cause and effect, involving as it does supernatural means, is much more closely related to a
vision of history shared by Christian reconstructionists, seventeenth-century Puritans, and
ancient Hebrews.

At the same time, students should be cautioned about the presumption that somehow we
can enter entirely into another cultural vision, whether it be that of the Lakota during the
Ghost Dance period of the 1880s or the Puritan Separatists three centuries earlier. This is
not only a matter of translation and transcription. As both Murray and Clifford point out,
what is sometimes blithely called “the need to understand” or “the search for knowledge” is
not a neutral quest, but one determined in great measure by the often unarticulated aims
and attitudes of the dominant society that structures fields of inquiry and creates the need
for certain kinds of information. Although most contemporary students often assume that
all differences can be overcome, the facticity of difference will remain.

Questions for Reading and Discussion/ Approaches to Writing

1. The number of works addressed in this section is so great and the material so varied that
particular questions would not be useful. A good lead-in to all of these works, however,
would focus on motivation of characters or significance of action. I would want students to
identify some action in the narrative that puzzles them, and would encourage them to try to
explain the role of this action in the narrative and what might motivate it. They will not
necessarily be successful at answering that question, but the activity of trying to answer
that question will compel them to seek for meaning ultimately in some kind of cultural
context. There is, in other words, a certain kind of appropriate aesthetic frustration here,
which should not necessarily be discouraged, because it prepares the student to let go of the
notion that human behavior is everywhere intelligible in universal terms.

2. I usually have students write comparative papers. I ask them to identify a theme: for
example, the relationship between human beings and animals, attitudes toward death, the
role of women, or other similar topics, and to write comparatively using Native American
texts and a Euro-American text that they find to be comparable.

Bibliography

Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara. ” ‘A Tolerated Margin of Mess’: The Trickster and His Tales
Reconsidered.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 9 (1975): 147-86.

Fenton, William. “This Island, the World on Turtle’s Back.” Journal of American Folklore
75 (1962): 283-300.

Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a Cultural System.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New
York: Basic Books, 1973.

Holland, Jeanne. “Teaching Native American Literature from The Heath Anthology of
American Literature.” CEA Critic 55 (1993): 1-21.

Krupat, Arnold. Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, History, Literature. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1992.

Murray, David. Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American
Indian Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Radin, Paul. The Trickster. New York: Schocken, 1972.

Reichard, Gladys. “Literary Types and the Dissemination of Myths.” Journal of American
Folklore 34 (1914): 269-307.

Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown. American Indian Literatures: An Introduction, Bibliographic
Review, and Selected Bibliography. New York: MLA, 1990.

Sturtevant, William, ed. Handbook of North American Indians, 15 vols. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press.

Swann, Brian, ed. Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

— and Arnold Krupat, eds. Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Toelken, J. Barre. “The ‘Pretty Language’ of Yellowman: Genre, Mode, and Texture in
Navajo Coyote Narratives.” Genre 2 (1969): 21-235.

Wheeler-Voegelin, Erminie and R. W. Moore. “The Emergence Myth in Native America.”
Indiana University Publications in Folklore 9 (1957): 66-91.

Wiget, Andrew. “Oral Narrative.” In Native American Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Chapter 1.

–. “Reading Against the Grain: Origin Stories and American Literary History.” American
Literary History 2 (1991): 209-31.

–. “A Talk Concerning First Beginnings: Teaching Native American Oral Literatures.” The
Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter IX (Spring 1993): 4-7.

–. “Telling the Tale: A Performance Analysis of a Hopi Coyote Story.” In Recovering the
Word: Essays on the Native American Literature, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold
Krupat, 297-336.