Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, November 18, 2013

Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, November 18, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: In the Light of Reverence to gain a better understanding of the meaning of place for American Indians. http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2001/inthelightofreverence/thefilm.html

The filmed documentary titled “In the Light of Reverence” caught my attention, as I was somewhat involved in a similar project. More and more these days we see society and “civilization” over taking sacred sites everywhere in the world.  I had an alternative native music group called “Ghosthorse” and we released a CD called “Ksa” and the music from that CD, our original music, was used in the sound track of a short documentary entitled “On Sacred Ground”. It dealt with the same issue of encroachment on Bear Butt, a Native American sacred site in South Dakota. I recommend you look it up and watch it, it’s not as big of production as “In the Light of Reverence” but it is very well done.

There are places that are protected of course put even the protected sites often become tourist attractions. Just the increase of tourist traffic defiles these sacred sites in that it generates trash, noise and some types of activities that are not considered appropriate to those native peoples that hold those sites to be sacred. The film deals with what they are referring to as “American struggles to protect landscapes of spiritual significance” and all though this is an honorable endeavor I have a problem with including these sites as vacation destinations for thousands of citizens who either don’t understand their spiritual significance or just don’t respect it. It is very important that people who visit these places receive some kind of instruction or education as to what they mean to the indigenous population and how they are to be considered reverent and holy sites that have thousands of years of history and ceremony attached to them. The National Parks Service, the Department of the Interior, the U.S Forest Service and Department of Agriculture do provide training to their rangers as to provide information to tourist while they are visiting some of these sites in regards to their importance and spiritual background but never the less there still exists a serious amount of disrespect. Just the idea of these federal agencies having some sort of jurisdiction over these sites is a bit disrespectful to Native Americans, imagine any of these government agencies having jurisdiction over the Saint Patrick Cathedral or how about the American Indian Movement (AIM) having jurisdiction over the Vatican.

The film deals with the concerns and obstacles involved in what it takes to care for three specific sites by the native communities that hold them to be sacred. These sacred sites are Devils Tower in Wyoming a Lakota place of worship, the Hopis’ sacred Four Corners area of the Southwest and in California Mount Shasta a holy place for the Wintu people. These sites are threaten by many things that modern American society sees as progress or for one reason or another as necessary like ski resorts and other so called recreational destinations or heartless mining projects that leave the land desecrated and ravaged.  Some sites are destined to be removed from some native communities forever through government public works projects like the building of dams to provide electricity to near by non-native communities and cities but some do help as is the case with a native dam project in Nemaska, Quebec, Canada where the native people while staying in charge of the project have managed to save sacred sites and improve their economy while maintaining their sense of ecology. This elates to the on line resource in mod 3 entitled “In one life journey, the modern history of the Cree.

Then of course there’s always those who just can’t stop stealing Indian land. “When they take away our religion they have taken away everything.” That says it all, the activities that America allows to take place in and around these sacred sites is inhibiting the native population from exercising their religious freedom. Even the non-native people who mean well and want to experience these sacred sites in a spiritual way are actually doing harm. They create an unwanted traffic in areas that need to remain private an accessible to Native Americans only. They often trek where they shouldn’t or unwittingly and perhaps unknowingly desecrate the site in one way or another, even by being there can deter an devout native person, especially elders, from accessing the site to pray or perform a sacred ceremony.

I think these web resources were selected to help promote a cultural interaction as it deals with the indigenous people of North America for the purpose of generating awareness and understanding. There are links to related topics and alternate points of view, mostly the governments that make the information one gets more comprehensive. These recourses are meant to also promote scholarly research to educate the non-native population about Native American history, religion and contemporary issues. Being of Blackfoot native ancestry, on my father’s side, I found the reports in “ In The Light of Reverence” to be somewhat disturbing but, by the same token, I am glad that there are those of us, human beings that is, who find it important enough to dedicate their work and talents to bringing these issues to “light”, no pun intended.

I have saved the darkest reason that these sites come under attack and way they don’t get the proper respect and protection, racism. There are large numbers of non-native peoples who just hate native people for a lot of different reasons. While researching some related topics for this “first Peoples of North America” course I came upon this link:
http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/INT000000005.pdf