[Extract from the graduation thesis Recognition of the rights of the Native Peoples of Canada2015]
For millennia, American Indians have regarded the earth as a church, the bullion tables as altars, all of creation as pervaded by sacred vital forces, in a universal circle of equals, one related to the other in a vital balance.Β 200 The habitat represents the stage on which the realm of spirits and the physical world perform. Plants, forces of nature, celestial stars, human beings, herbs that heal and allow visions, are all part of a "family-run system",Β 201 in which all are relatives, "all equally children of the Great Mother Earth". The circle of the native universe contains in an inseparable whole the entire existing world, physical and spiritual. Thanks to what we said previously on the importance of the cd reciprocity law in native traditional philosophy, it is not difficult to understand that it is precisely this principle that forms the basis of this particular holistic vision of the cosmos as a single organism composed of a multitude of interconnected and interdependent parts.
The relationship that the natives have with the fauna and flora is, first of all, of knowledge e respect 202 - "In this word, respect, there is all ours lawSaid the great Lakota shaman Frank Fools Crow. This worldview is determined not only by reasons of survival and management of natural resources, but above all by deeply felt implications and spiritual and religious beliefs. What we have said about the subsistence principle is closely connected to this, which is not - as we have seen previouslyΒ 203 - to be understood as "what is necessary for the community in purely materialistic-economic terms" but rather as "what is necessary for the order of the cosmos to be kept intact"; only with these premises, in the opinion of the natives, it is possible to establish the community and the social relations that govern it, in a lasting way. Each segment of the life of the great relational circle of the cosmos is connected to the others in a balanced and harmonious way and without hierarchies of values: a tiny blade of grass is worth no less than a moose, a human being or a rock, because - according to a native saying - "God also sleeps in stone". The Earth itself is considered as a living being, a Mother from whose organism all creatures are born and get nourishment. It follows that all living creatures, trees and plants and even stones and rocks are considered by the natives as brothers born of the same Mother Earth, also conceived in the mind of the Great Spirit, considered the Creative Source of all that exists.
Chief Luther Standing Bear states: 204
Old Lakota was wise. He knew that if man's heart is detached from Nature it becomes cruel. He knew that disrespect for things that grow and live would soon lead to disrespect even for human beings. For this the young people were kept in contact with the sweet influence of the elders.
The nature of the native man's mind could rightly be defined holistic-global, to indicate its ability to identify with complex globality and to maintain these structures and their complexities in dynamic equilibrium. In their biocentric conception, man is not at the center of the universe, as in Worldview Western anthropocentric: these is considered only one of many living beings among others and not master o lord of the Earth.
Scholar Paula Gunn Allen clarifies that: 205
In the Indian world there is no conception according to which being would be distributed along a hierarchical-vertical scale, with the earth and trees placed on the lower steps, animals a little higher and man, especially the civilized one, on the top. All things are considered rather as sisters or relatives⦠all are daughters of the Great Mystery and of Mother Earth, and indispensable members of an ordered, balanced and vital whole. This concept is applied to both supernatural aspects and visible phenomena of the universe. Native American thought makes no dualistic distinctions, nor does it draw categorical lines of separation between what is considered material and what is spiritual, as both are seen and conceived as expressions of the same reality.
A similar vision of the cosmos, in truth, is not the prerogative of the so-called "indigenous" peoples alone: ββLauretano points out how it is also found in the history of Western philosophy, with the name of ilozoism. It is a current of thought that begins with the pre-Socratic philosophers, continues with the Stoics and is also followed by the naturalist philosophers of the Renaissance up to Spinoza. According to the ilozoists, there is acosmic homogeneity: everything is animated, everything is in motion, everything is endowed with sensitivity, everything is alive. The divine is everywhere, widespread and pervasive: we could well say that "the world is full of gods".Β 206
We have seen that the relational circle of the universe is experienced by natives in a sense of global, cosmic space, without distinctions, without linear-chronological times and without any hierarchy and priority within the various segments of creation. This highlights the difference between the native circular conception and the western linear one, that is, the antinomy between the circle and the straight line, between space and time, between biocentrism and anthropocentrism. To the hierarchical-vertical conception of the straight line of Westerners - the life of the individual is but a point, distinct from the others, also by role and importance, placed on an infinite line of progress and development that runs through the various phases of historical time - they oppose the cyclical and the global, circular one, symbolized by the roundness of the Sacred Hoop, the sacred circle of the universe that contains everything.
The white man was of the opinion, and still is, that everything must have a beginning and an end, a beginning and an end. Native Americans on the other hand, not noticing straight lines in nature, did not perceive beginnings and ends, but only changes in a continuous evolutionary process. The circle for American Indians is sacred because it indicates one way of understanding: provides a means to understand the cosmos, the mysteries of life and death. 207 It can therefore be said that the circle is the emblem of Indianity and is the basis of many indigenous and archaic cultures; and since it represents the totality of existence and the entire cosmos, it takes on a character multidimensional - physical, spiritual-religious, philosophical, mythical, relational - since it welcomes within itself matter and spirit, natural and supernatural, animate and inanimate things, dream and reality, animal, vegetable, mineral and human world, and so on. The circle fully expresses the vision that natives have of creation, of life and death, of nature, of the cosmos, of existing relationships and correlations, of the circular flow of time, since everything is arranged and moves in a circle and shows those values ββof unity, of compactness, of equality in diversity, which the circle itself suggests. The circle, according to Ludovici, is βthe model of interpersonal relationships that combines equality and diversityβ. 208
The entire Indian civilization was built starting from the study of the environment that follows circular and cyclic patterns: all things in nature are presented in the form of a circle. 209 Man observes the physical world through the eye, which is round; the Earth is round, as are the Sun, the Moon and the planets; the rising and setting of the Sun follows a circular motion. The seasons form a circle; birds build their circular nests; animals mark their territory in circles. 210 Certainly, for the Native American, life seemed to unfold in a circular pattern. Hence the use of the circular shape in any aspect of native community life, from the construction of the strictly circular-based tapee to the decision to resolve one's internal conflicts with the so-called technique sentencing circle. 211
The philosopher Bruno Lauretano suggests using, instead of the term "technology", The most peculiar of"circumstanceβ, To be understood asβ the space that surrounds us, not the empty space, but that inhabited, populated by multiple beings". 212 circumstancetherefore, we must not only understand the environment understood in the landscape or naturalistic sense, which refers only to the spatial dimension: the notion, in addition to the spatial one, also includes the temporal dimension. The circumstance is, therefore, "themembership set"And recalls the idea of"cohabitation, co-belonging, commonality of destiny, sharing". 213Β Consequently, every being is necessarily circumstantial, linked to the situation and circumstances of his existence in which he finds himself: the existence of each one is not separate and independent from the circumstance, but relational and reticular. The universe itself is reticular, consisting of a dense network of interdependencies and connections.
On the contrary, for the Western man the square represents what the circle represents for the natives: the houses in which he lives, the rooms, the doors that separated him from the other members of the family, the television, the computer, the banknotes are square. , and so on. It is as if the white man's life was made up of a series of boxes, inserted one inside the other and only occasionally in connection with each other. This is followed by the fragmentation of the individuality of the white man, who in the course of his life now finds himself representing one role, now another, and who rarely or only fleetingly manages to connect with his own "center" (the Self Jungian). Furthermore, if once the European populations also based their existence on the cycles of nature - think of the solstitial and equinoctial ceremonies that have characterized the ancient so-called pagan civilizations for millennia - and therefore they too lived in harmony with the sacred circle of universe, it appears evident today that this vision has almost disappeared: the tsacred time has been replaced by the historical time, the circle with the straight line of progress, communion with all that is born and grows in nature from savage exploitation for the sole purpose of gain.
Note:
200 When, in the United States, the Peabody Coal Company initiated the exploitation of the sacred Black Mesa, the Hopi filed a lawsuit in the federal court in Washington, accusing the corporation with these words:
βGutting the Black Mesa in the process known as an open pit mine is a desecration, a sacrilege, an act contrary to the instructions of the Great Spirit. [These lands] are the spiritual center of the universe. The prophecies say that if [these] lands are ruined, the world will end β. (S. Steiner 1976, p. 22).
201 N. Minnella 1998, p. 25.
202 G. Gibson MacDonald, JB Zoe and T. Satterfield 2013, p. 58.
203 See chapter 1, paragraph 8.
204 K. Meadows 1990, p. 18.
205 P. Gunn Allen 1979, pp. 222-239.
206 B.Lauretano 2004, p. 16.
207Β K. Meadows 2013, p. 44:
βThe circle was sacred to the Amerindians because it indicated a Way of Understanding. It provided a means of understanding the Cosmos, the mysteries of life and death, the mind and the individuality of the ego. With the circle, the Amerindian shaman could show how the Cosmos worked, how the laws of Nature and the Cosmos governed all living beings, how to discover the relationship between man and other life forms on the Planet and how to get in harmony with the Nature, with the Great Spirit and with one's own Spirit. "
208 N. Minnella, cit. 1998, p. 27.
209 It is curious to note how in the Latin root of the term "technology"There is the idea of ββcircularity of the territory - ambitus in Latin it means βcircle, circle, sphere, circleβ.
210 K. Meadows 2013, p. 52.
211 See chapter 2, paragraph 10.
212 B. Lauretano, cit. 2004, p. 17.
213 Ibidem.
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