The late Vine Deloria, Jr. Photo from So May We Be
The Rez of the Story
Tribal Religions Still Viable
By Vince Two Eagles Hau Mitakuepi (Greetings My Relatives), Vine Deloria Junior's singularly important work entitled God Is Red
is perhaps the definitive examination of the contrast of Native religious structures and practices with that of white America ever written by a fellow Native writer of his time or any other in my opinion.
Here is an excerpt from his work. I think readers would appreciate the challenge of Vine’s intellect and point of view.
“Logan, the Mingo chief, appealed to the Virginians for justice at the peace council following the back country war of 1774: “I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan’s cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him not.” Such hospitality characterized the tribal religious communities precisely because they were communities limited to specific groups, identifiable to the world in which they lived and responsible for maintaining a minimum standard of hospitality and integrity. “The obvious benefit of a tribal religion is its co-exitensiveness with other functions of the community. Instead of a struggle between church and state, the two become complementary aspects of community life. The necessity of expanding the political functions of government into the social welfare is avoided as religious duties cover the informal aspects of community concern, and the coercive side of community life as we have traditionally seen it in Western democracies is blunted by its correspondence with religious understandings of life. Yet religious wars are avoided because of the recognition that other peoples have special powers and medicines given to them, thus precluding an exclusive franchise being issued to any one group of people. “In the closing decades of the last century, the Indian tribes could not be broken politically until they had been destroyed religiously, as the two functions supported each other to an amazing degree. Some Indians agents were able to keep control of reservations because of their use of Indian police. The tribal members would not kill their own people, and those Indians still resisting the Army refused to kill the tribal policemen. When religious ceremonies were banned and the reservations turned over to missionaries and political patronage appointees, the decline of both the traditional political leaders and the religious solidarity of the people was accomplished in a very short term. The Indian Reorganization Act made some restoration of tribal religion possible by abolishing the rules and regulations that forbade the practice of tribal religions on the reservations. By creating corporate forms of government for political and economic ends, however, the federal government created the same problems of religious confusion in the Indian tribes that existed in America at large. “Today with tribal governments severed from the tribal religious life, the integrity of the governments is dependent only on the ability of outside forces to punish wrongdoers. If the people of the reservation see no wrong in the actions of their tribal government in as political sense, they generally keep them in office in spite of constant failures of that government or council to act on behalf of the reservation community. “Even with large defections of the tribal members to Christianity and Mormonism and with the political structure of the respective tribes frozen into quasi-corporate forms of activity, Indian tribes have shown amazing resilience in meeting catastrophes visited on them by government policies and outside interference. The primary identity of the group remains and in many cases has been perpetuated by the government with its incessant concern for administration and distribution of individual and tribal trust property. The major difference between Christianity and tribal religions thus remain active. Tribal members know who they are, and for better or for worse, the whole tribe is involved in its relations with the rest of the world.”For sure there is much diversity in our Native community when it comes to religious belief but is reassuring to many traditionals of the tribe that the “old way” is alive and flourishing. What exactly is the “old way” remains an elusive question to be examined some other time as it is equally elusive to try to define what then, is the “new way.” And now you know the rez of the story. Doksha (later). . . Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.
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