Anyone familiar with indigenous beliefs?

[angell1]

please only answer if you are familiar with native American beliefs, or if you have ancestry.

here in Canada, it’s a big issue. basically, Europeans tried to assimilate them and the residential school system reallyhit them hard, lots of physical and sexual abuse by clergy.

it’s hard to know what to do. many of them don’t want anything to do with the church or regular Canadians. can’t exactly blame them either.

when it comes to their beliefs, I’m trying to distinguish what would be compatible with christianity and what wouldn’t.

apparently there can be a lot of mixing sometimes.

some examples, sweat lodges, smudging, totem poles, their songs and drumming, dreamcatchers etC… I certainly think culture is important

any ideas?

 

[Rhubarb]

I’m pretty sure native beliefs aren’t a monolith. They’re as diverse as the peoples themselves.

 

[newcalling]

I am familiar with the beliefs of some tribes, but Native American beliefs are diverse. The different Native American cultures each have different origin stories, different views about God and spirit, etc. There are common threads between many groups, but there is no one answer to evangelize every group. I have studied the Lakota, Hopi and Navajo though I am not an expert by far. I have also some familiarity with the Inuit, as well as some knowledge of South American cultures. As you’re talking about Canadian tribes I might be of less help, but I will keep an eye on this thread in case there is anything more specific I can answer (or if I can find the answer through my connections with Native American communities.)

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I agree with each of the posts above. It is always good to learn other traditions, especially if they are a part of your local community identity. Perhaps another question might be how you, as a Catholic, can appreciate and support another set of rituals and traditions.

For instance, when I go to a wedding or a funeral in an unfamiliar church or temple, I try to learn as much as I can. I am quite happy to be a guest. I will participate as I am able or invited. That is what guests do. No one is expecting me to sign on the dotted line, but I am always gracious and polite. And I always give honor.

Can you approach native traditions in the same way?

 

[angell1]

I agree with each of the posts above. It is always good to learn other traditions, especially if they are a part of your local community identity. Perhaps another question might be how you, as a Catholic, can appreciate and support another set of rituals and traditions.

For instance, when I go to a wedding or a funeral in an unfamiliar church or temple, I try to learn as much as I can. I am quite happy to be a guest. I will participate as I am able or invited. That is what guests do. No one is expecting me to sign on the dotted line, but I am always gracious and polite. And I always give honor.

Can you approach native traditions in the same way?

I’m more thinking along the lines of someone who is native and catholic and wondering how much of their traditions can be kept. I just don’t know enough about it

 

[angell1]

I am familiar with the beliefs of some tribes, but Native American beliefs are diverse. The different Native American cultures each have different origin stories, different views about God and spirit, etc. There are common threads between many groups, but there is no one answer to evangelize every group. I have studied the Lakota, Hopi and Navajo though I am not an expert by far. I have also some familiarity with the Inuit, as well as some knowledge of South American cultures. As you’re talking about Canadian tribes I might be of less help, but I will keep an eye on this thread in case there is anything more specific I can answer (or if I can find the answer through my connections with Native American communities.)

from what you do know, how much of their culture is compatible with cahtolicism?

 

[newcalling]

from what you do know, how much of their culture is compatible with cahtolicism?

It depends on which tribe, but there’s hardly anything in most native cultures which is incompatible. The church is very adaptive to various cultural viewpoints, such as allowing El Dia de Los Muertos celebrations; an originally pagan festival which was given a Catholic interpretation. Here locally we have the Salinan and Chumash tribes, and they keep a lot of their old festivals, songs and traditions even among those who are Catholic. When our missiin held a service in honor of Junipero Sera becoming a saint, the Salinan people were even allowed to “smudge” with sage, which is a common Native American practice among many tribes. Smudging is a process of spiritually cleansing an area, person or object by praying and burning dried herbs (white sage is common.) I’m not sure if they smudged the chapel, each other or what because I couldn’t make it to the service, but it was in the announcement for the schedule of the evening. In some cases the early church missionaries in the Americas even allowed for some Native American tribes to keep a name for their deity, such as “Great Spirit” or even “Wakan Tanka,” but applied those names to God instead of the pagan god to which it originally referred (then again, even some Hebrew names for God were used by pagan cultures to refer to other deities.)

Another good example would be liturgical dancing and music. The church generally frowns on liturgical dancing and also limits what musical instruments can be used in mass. However, among indigenous tribes and other cultures to whom dancing has always been a part of worship, liturgical dancing of a kind appropriate to that culture is allowed. In addition, musical instruments which are traditional to those cultures are also allowed.

About the only thing that they would need to change is that if they are not monotheistic, they must become so. Many Native American cultures are polytheistic or pantheistic, many being animists. Some few are already monotheistic, but just have a different view of God which sometimes needs to be changed if they become Catholic.

I hope that information helps you. God bless.

 

[Medawlinno]

I Have to agree with “NewCalling” - beliefs are quite diverse. Here in northern New England there common beliefs and practices, but there’s a lot of integration form other tribes as well; mainly minor things - people here smudge with sage, but sage is not native to this area, traditional smudging was done with other herbs but the readily availability of sage smudgesticks seems to have replaced them to some degree.

Hard to say what would be compatible or not - obviously, for people here, not much was considered “compatible” back in the 1600’s when the people here were first Christianized (some by the Puritan English, some by the Catholic French).

The tradtional beliefs here (northern New England) are essentially virtually the same as with the Mi’kmaq of the Canadian Maritimes or the Maliseet of New Brunswick.

I tend to think the general traditional views are much like pre-Christian Europe; the ‘spirit world’ was very much a part of everyday life and people interacted with it in various ways. In some respect the cycle of the seasons played just as much a part here as it did in pre-Christian Europe.

I’m what some people would call a “PODIA” (person of distant Indian ancestry) - mainly Penobscot, but also Mi’kmaq, Algonquin, and possibly Abenaki. I can not (and do not) claim to be Native American, but I am familiar with the culture, and most especially languages and traditional music of the area.