OL,
I just read your comments on NA spirituality at ST- copied below. Are you Native? Where did you acquired your information?
You might speak TO a native before you attempt to speak FOR them.
And then, speak only about one specific nation at a time. Don?t lump them all together.
The glaring disrespect that has been demonstrated is the program/staff co-opting and bastardizing NA spirituality. It?s appealing to new-agey parents looking for a ?rite of passage? for their kid. They are ignorantly and arrogantly misrepresenting and disgracing NA spirituality. Where did they get their training?
You fairly accurately said, To begin with the cultures of the children and the Native American spirituality are incompatible.
So?. Seems more authentic if instead of blowing on a smudge stick and passing out ?earth names??. she?d been pretending to be a priest- waving around an incense pot and praying for their sins? Or taking them down to the river and baptizing them in the name of the program?
Don?t get me wrong, I think these kids, and most teens, could use something of value in their lives, but don?t think for a minute sagewalk?s version of Vision Quest bares any resemblance to the real thing. They might actually benefit from a traditional VQ, which would involve first A DESIRE, then extensive planning and would include all family members. It is NEVER forced and hallucinogens and/or fasting are not ?required?, they are personal options.
You can read more about that in my post at Sociopranos:
http://www.sociopranos.com/forums/threa ... &start=301http://www.strugglingteens.com/cgi-bin/ ... p=2#000030Indian spiritualism is based on animism and ancestor worship. Animism is the belief that everything has a spirit. This means the rocks, trees, birds, deer, and what have you all have a spirit. It, inside its cultural context, creates a reverence for their surroundings and increased stewardship of their resources. This religion grew out of the necessity to survive. They wished better weather so they prayed to the earth. They wished more deer so they prayed to the spirit of the deer. There is not religious fulfillment in Native American spirituality; it is all about the importance of survival. There is not recognition of sin, which there is in a great many other religions. The Indians were influenced by their surroundings to the point of starvation. So they beseeched their surroundings to survive.
Lets move on to the vision quest. The Vision Quest was generally a way to become "one" with the world around oneself. It was almost always aided by narcotics of some kind, generally mescal or peyote. For those visions that were not induced by narcotics they were induced by stress. The idea was stress the body enough and the spirit will leave it and unite with the world. It?s slightly comparable to a out of body/ near death experience. Both forms of Vision Quests can be very very dangerous for the user.
There is no set scripture in Native American spirituality. There are no holy books or holy writings. This fact can lead to deviancy from any form of the "true" faith. The religion is generally handed down from stories, which of course can change. There is no history to Native American spirituality. No one really knows when it started, and no one really knows who started it. I believe that the possibility it evolved naturally is very unlikely. Because the religion was wide spread through out the country, so it is very likely that one person, or a group of people spread it throughout the country. The religion cannot be classified as a cult persay because it does not meet a few of the requirements about controlling its members, but it can be considered a false religion.
Now for my synopsis of how this affects the kids.
To begin with the cultures of the children and the Native American spirituality are incompatible. These kids have never been so dependant on their surroundings for anything. Indeed a good survivalist would not be so dependant. There is the first stress. The idea of giving the spirituality a validity via showing it as a part of therapy is disrespectful to the religion as a whole. Positioning this religion as important in therapy challenges any religious ideas that they have formed. This can be dangerous and wrong, considering that we are talking about children?s immortal souls here. This of course is the second stress. Then we have the stress put on the children by the therapists. All this combines to crush mostly everything they person has become. And indeed they could have a vision quest, one caused by stress, which is just as good as any mental break down. Now the purpose of the wilderness is to break down their resistance, I have been told anyway. At this point I would generally make a crack about how it sounds a lot like breaking a POW but that has nothing to do with the subject . Moving on the use of Native American spirituality is to, I believe, blunt the cutting up of their mentality, and give it a air of "We know what were doing."
P.S. If any one wants me to continue on about why Native American spirituality is wrong, I would be happy to, just ask. I tried to offer a unbiased discussion on it, but its really not the totality of what I completely believe, because I believe its wrong. I did not try to disprove it in this talk, but I can.
