Winona LaDuke

Including Winona LaDuke’s book Recovering the Sacred, in a religion and spirituality class did not make sense to me at first. It seemed more like a lesson in American history than a commentary on religion or spirituality. However I began to see a pattern in the relationship between Manifest Destiny, land seizure, and the theft of Native spirituality. Throughout this country’s history there has been an ever increasing pattern of consumption. As America began to grow in population (European settlement) more and more land was required and taken by force. Native people had not only their land, possessions, and lives taken away, but their remains as well. This pattern of consumption fulfilled the desires and mandates of the Christian faith, while it simultaneously destroyed another.
Native culture has been forced to take a back seat to that of Judeo-Christian faiths. It did not matter that Native peoples were here first, European settlers stole their land which was not only a life source, but spiritual source as well. The land was sacred and the sources of ancestral legends and yet the resources it contained were more important that maintaining Native grounds. This is not completely surprising in a world with a history of conquest and war, but what is surprising is what happened after the conquest. Within the U.S. we have built monuments and museums to our former conquests, which look back and try to help us remember what there once was. The museums like the Smithsonian and other keepers of historical artifacts have been revered and cherished within our society. I know that I myself have gone to several museums and even went to Washington D.C. just so I could venture through the Smithsonian, however I never thought of the repercussions. Going to a museum for me was merely taking a stroll through history. To be honest I often times found it dull or boring because I never once tried to comprehend what I was seeing or attribute any meaning.
LaDuke’s book really opened my eyes to what these museums contain. Yes in some ways parts of our history, but also someone’s ancestor or stolen heirlooms. Things that were taken as spoils of war and then put on display for all to see. The most disturbing of all of these is the remains of the deceased. Bodies taken from their loved ones in order to study, poke, prod, and display the dead. Many of these bodies had their brains and organs removed in order to study and prove that Native people were “inferior” to the white population. These studies were obviously biased and far from scientific and yet took place for many years. Not only that but now Native people are having to fight to get the remains of their ancestors back. Native Americans have been using the court system for years now to fight for access to their ancestors and the ability to lay them properly to rest. While this may seem silly or nothing to make a big deal over for some, the question that comes to my mind is how many European remains do we see on display? Were the tables turned wouldn’t the uproar and mobilization of the community be greater? The fact that these remains are only display sends two important messages, or has two lines of thinking for me. One is that to be displayed in museums like this means that these people are seen as backwards, primitive, and needing to be studied. The other is that so much has been taken from Native Americans, why is it that we cannot and will not admit our mistakes and return what is not ours?
It is because of our culture and upbringing that we justify these wrongs to ourselves. Our culture has been taught to look back and remember, but not to preserve and help thrive. We look and struggle to fix things only after they have become broken, only after near irreparable damage has been done. Both our history and our culture have taught us that it is purely acceptable to be this way and that in fact behaving in any other way is backwards or that of uncivilized people. In this way we are able to maintain and never break from our learned behaviors. If we are taught that it is right to behave this way, then we do not need to question or look for negative consequences.

Thomas Berry’s book, The Dream of the Earth, begins its ninth chapter with a one paragraph summary of the economic and ecological history of the United States. He quite impressively states “After some four centuries of the American experience, we have before us a still beautiful and abundant land, but a land of roads and automobiles and grimy cities, a land of acid rainfall, polluted rivers and endangered species, a land extensively plundered of its forests and its mineral resources, a land with its human inhabitants somewhat bewildered and rebellious against their role as the great consumer people of earth.”(Berry, 109) It cannot be said any more plainly that Americans have had an everlasting and in some ways devastating impact on the earth. The issues and topics that Berry’s writings address are the same of those in Ishmael. As human beings we are given a pretext for our actions and the way we live our lives through our religion or spirituality. For many though, this is an excuse to live our lives without question under strict guidelines, without taking a moment to think about the consequences of our actions.
Berry talks about the three types of spirituality: traditional Christian spirituality, the American spirituality, and the emerging spirituality and how they function within society. He claims that the most devastating of all is the public spirituality. It reigns unchecked, telling humans they need more, more, more. This spirituality has shaped the world into what it is today, but when looking at the grander scale, that is from the evolutionary time line, humans are such a small blip. How is it then that we have had such an impact on the planet? Berry believes it is because we as humans, do not have a functional cosmology to guide us. He states “Yet with such a magical world as we have made, or discovered, we have no functional cosmology to guide and discipline our human use of all this knowledge and skill and all these energy resources.”(Berry, 112) Which translates to mean that though we have the tools, brain power, and will, we do not understand the meaning of what we are given.
I believe that in many ways this is reiterating the story of the Takers. Takers have the tools and the “toys” and because we have them we use them or play with them. As Takers we test what we can do, simply to see the results. The problem with this is that often times, it is not until years later that we see the true results. If we drop a bomb to obliterate those who would do us harm, immediately we see that we stopped them from hurting us. It is not until years later that we see the cancer, illness, and environmental destruction our actions have caused. Stand outside in the sun as a child and burn your skin until it is perfectly tanned. Thirty years later find the melanoma residing within your body. This is the Taker story as Berry is describing it. We have the means and yet have no meaning.