Relations to non-human creatures and creations are mightly important and prominently developed themes in Native American thinking.

Relations to other created-creative-creaturely life is important for interpreting various circles of social ethical concern, circles ranging from the most general population of all peoples to very specific peoples, tribes, and nations.

There are twelve circles of concern identified in this chapter.
You may visit them sequencially, moving from the most general to the more specific, by simply continuing to scroll down the page,
or,
you may jump to selected circles by selecting from the following Circle of Concerns Menu.

Circle of Concerns Menu

• (section 1) human peoples generically
• (section 2) contemporary human peoples globally
• (section 3) contemporary human peoples globally (more specific prescriptions & visions)
• (section 4) contemporary human peoples in the Lands of the Peoples of the Eagle & the Condor,
  also called the Americas
• (section 5) contemporary human peoples in the Land of the People of the Eagle,
  which is the Great Turtle Island,
  also called North America
• (section 6) contemporary human peoples north of the Rio Grande River,
  which is in the Land of the People of the Eagle,
  which is the Great Turtle Island,
  also called North America
• (section 7) contemporary Native American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories
• (section 8) contemporary European-American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories
• (section 9) contemporary African-American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories
• (section 10) contemporary Mestizo-American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories
• (section 11) contemporary Asian-American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories
• (section 12) other contemporary hyphenated-American peoples
  in Native American and U.S. claimed territories

Here, other life includes not only other human lives and future human lives, but also and very importantly,
other life includes other-than-human created-creative-creaturely lives of all kinds:
including especially the land, its animals, plants, and waters, and the whole living-breathing planet, our Mother Earth; and
including remote and more inclusive cosmic lives and spirits.
Furthermore, other life includes the all-inclusive life of the Creator/Great Spirit.
[more on relations to the Creator/Great Spirit in chapter four: about Religion]

For all human peoples in all peopled spaces and times,
righteous relations to other life will contribute to good for people
and to good for other life.

Peoples, tribes, and nations rightly related to other life are envisioned as contributing to the good, to shared well-being, and to the flourishing of other and future human and non-human life.

According to Native American social wisdom, all human peoples, nations, tribes and individuals in all peopled spaces and times should be rightly related to the land and to other created-creative-creaturely life.

George Tinker of the Osage nation identifies "respect" and "reciprocity" as essential to being rightly related to other living things.

Traditional tribal peoples are sometimes called "natural peoples" by Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations because traditionally, tribal peoples are more rightly related (respect and reciprocity) to the natural world and other creaturely life.

By contrast, modern non-tribal peoples are distinguished
by a characteristically modern failure to value other life rightly, that is
by philosophies and religions and laws which afford other creaturely life only lesser and instrumental value (thereby reducing other life and the whole natural world to human properties and instruments with no independent moral or legal standing or rights), and
by destructive and exploitive relations to the land, to other creaturely life, and to the planet as a whole.

Accordingly, one may distinguish between
traditional tribal relations to other life and
modern non-tribal relations to other life.

Traditional tribal relations to other life are more righteous relations to other life.

By contrast, modern non-tribal relations to other life are destructive, oppressive, exploitive, and morally unrighteous.

Unlike traditional tribal philosophies,
modern non-tribal philosophies fail to recognize the ubiquity of life. This failure is one of the characteristic and defining features of modern thought.

Modern philosophies see life as a rare phenomenon emerging from insentient-innert-lifeless-dead matter.

If we think of our human selves and of our human societies as organisms and societies of organisms living within a much larger host who is our living-breathing Mother Earth;
then we can predict,
when the smaller human organisms habitually and increasingly contribute toxins-destruction-dis-ease to the life of the host organism, and to much other life within the host,
sooner or later,
the host and other life within the host must come to recognize modern humanity as cancerous growths.

And sooner or later
(like phagocytosis where human blood cells destroy harmful agents), our Mother Earth and Her other life must resist and destroy the modern cancer within.

According to Native American social wisdom
about contemporary human peoples globally,
continuing with modernity, that is with past (500+ years) and present modern non-tribal relations to other life, will contribute to increasingly exploitive and destructive relations to the land and other life.

Continuing with modern relations to other life will continually and increasingly threaten the well-being of much other life, and eventually, the very survival of human life.

In GOD IS RED, Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations writes:

"We may well become one of the few species in this vast universe that has permanently ruined our home. Future explorers from other planets will walk this earthly wasteland and marvel at our stupidity and wonder why we could not accept the reality of our own finitude." (p. 3)

Many Native Americans envision the possibility of a more favorable alternative to continuing with past and present modern philosophies, religions, and habits.

They envision a future where human peoples globally come
to more fully appreciate traditional tribal values, philosophies, and religions,
to recognize the ubiquity of life,
to value other life more rightly, and
to develop more righteous relations (respect and reciprocity) with other living things.

According to Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations,
for contemporary traditional tribal peoples,
achieving more righteous relations to other life/land must include continuing with the revival of tribal religious ceremonies "performed on behalf of the earth, all humans, and the other forms of life" (GODISRED2nd, p. 3).
Deloria says:

"In traveling around the country I now see revivals of ancient ceremonies in many tribes as if the people had been warned of the catastrophes that await us. It is time for the people to gather and perform their old ceremonies and make a final effort to renew the earth and its peoples--hoofed, winged, and others." (GODISRED2nd, p. 3)

In addition to prescribing a revival of tribal religious ceremonies, Deloria also prescribes that traditional tribal peoples teach modern non-tribal peoples about righteous relations to other life/land.

According to Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations, for contemporary modern non-tribal peoples, achieving more righteous relations to other life/land must include "expanding the legal universe" (MME, p. ix, chapter 13, p. 132ff).
Modern non-tribal peoples must come to appreciate the intrinsic value of other (non-human) creaturely life, and to develop appropriate religion, philosophy, and law.

Deloria says,

"Christopher Stone, a brilliant attorney, suggests that according natural objects legal rights may be the first step to ecological sanity--a conclusion inherent in the Indian view of the world" (MME, p. ix).

In the area of law, the legal universe must be expanded so as to include attention to the rights of other (non-human) creatures and creations.

According to traditional tribal social wisdom, the land and the natural world are not rightly reducible to human properties and objects of instrumental value to humans.

Other living creatures and creations, land, water, and the planet as a whole, all have intrinsic values and rights.

Presently, these values and rights are not included in the legal universe of modern non-tribal peoples.

According to Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations,
for Native American and other traditional tribal religions,
relationship to land is "a fundamental element of religion" (p. 289).

According to Arvol Looking Horse (19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe for the Lakota Sioux Nation), the recent birth of a white buffalo calf is a sign of humanity now at a critical crossroads. On a December 1995 web page entitled "Arvol Looking Horse," Arvol Looking Horse is quoted as saying:

"The birth of the White Buffalo Calf lets us know we are at a crossroads - either return to balance or face global disaster. It is our duty to return back to sacred places and pray for world peace - if we do not do this our children will suffer."

As with contemporary religions globally, in the lands of the peoples of the Eagle and Condor, lands which are recently called North and South America, there are:

• traditional tribal peoples with respectful-reciprocal relations to other life/land
  and
• modern non-tribal peoples with oppressive-exploitive relations to other life/land.

Here,
the traditional tribal peoples are mainly Native American peoples, and
the modern non-tribal peoples are mainly hybrid or hyphenated-American peoples (European-American, Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian-American, etc.)

:o:o:o:o:
:o:o:o:o:

[terminology: "people of the Eagle" and "people of the Condor"]

[terminology: "hybrid," "hyphenated-American," and "Native American"]

[terminology: "Wasichus"]

Presently, Native American peoples are continuing "500 years of indigenous resistance" to modernity.

Among hyphenated-American peoples, modernity continues.

According to Native American values,
continuing indigenous resistance is good; modernity is not.

On the Great Turtle Island,
recently called North America,
which is the land of the People of the Eagle,
there is a great river.

Recently,
this great river has come to be called "Rio Grande" by English speaking hyphenated-American peoples on its northern side and "Rio Bravo" by Spanish speaking hyphenated-American peoples on its southern side.

North of this great river,
Native American peoples are many tribes and many nations
and
hyphenated-American peoples are not tribes and only two nations--Canada and the United States of America.

The land and water spaces claimed by Native American tribes and nations overlap and conflict with the claims of the two hyphenated-American nations.

According to Native American judgments,
by right of long generations of prior occupancy, and by right of hundreds of treaties, the claims of Native American tribes and nations hold legal and moral priority.

These lands and water ways are traditionally, legally, and rightly the sovereign homeland of indigenous-aboriginal Native American tribes and nations.

Hyphenated-American peoples are not indigenous to these lands.
The bones of their long dead generations are not buried here.
They have no subtantial long-standing rootage to specific lands, waters, places, and locations on the Great Turtle Island.

Throughout U.S. history,
Native American peoples have been victim of virtually unrelenting efforts to force them (literally, by any means necessary)

to surrender tribal existence,

to surrender tribal and national sovereignty,

to surrender tribal ownership of land and tribal relations to land and other life, and

to surrender tribal religions in favor of modern Christian religion.

Despite these unrelenting efforts, Native American resistance continues. As elsewhere in the lands of the peoples of the Eagle and Condor, Native American tribes and nations in areas claimed by the U.S. government are continuing to resisit.

To be sure, some Native Americans are seeking to convert modern non-tribal peoples
to rightly tribal existence,
to rightly tribal relations to land and other created-creative-creaturely life, and
to rightly tribal religions.

For the short term,
in the U.S. and elsewhere in the lands of the peoples of the Eagle and Condor, modern hybrid and hyphenated-Americans will probably continue claiming political sovereignity over Native American peoples, tribes, nations, and land; and
they will probably continue claiming ownership over Native American lands, and
they will probably continue to regard land (and other life) as an exploitable private property or commodity.

In short, modern relations to the land and to other-than-human created-creative-creaturely life will probably continue into the near future.

And, Native American resistance will continue.

In the long run,
according to many Native American expectations, predictions, visions, and prophecies,
traditional tribal or natural relations to land and other life will survive and outlive modern exploitive relations to land and other life.

For example,
Vine Deloria of the Sioux nations predicts Native American tribes and nations will "survive" and "outlast" "the white man" (CUSTER, p. 224), and that tribal existence and tribal/"natural" relations to other life/land will succeed over modern existence and modern exploitive relations to other life/land.

With regard to land,
in THE METAPHYSICS OF MODERN EXISTENCE under the theme of tribalism,
in THE NATIONS WITHIN under the theme of nationalism, and
in GOD IS RED under the theme of religion,
Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations prescribes that Native American tribes and nations in territories presently claimed by the U.S.A. seek the following:

• protection of existing land holdings, including especially sacred sites,
• recovery of previously lost holdings, and
• recolonization of areas not presently occupied by Native Americans.

Furthermore, Deloria prescribes rejecting the modern view of land as an individually-owned-private property. Instead, Native Americans should view themselves as guardians of properties belonging to future generations, and they should continue with the traditional tribal habit of holding land collectively.

Deloria's descriptions:

Presently,
the U.S. claims sovereignty over "two billion acres" of Native American land (CUSTER,p38).

Furthermore,
according to Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations:

"America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreement despite the fact that the United States government signed over four hundred such treaties and agreements with Indian tribes." (CUSTER,p28)

"... it is doubtful that any nation will ever exceed the record of the United States for perfidy ..." (CUSTER,p28)

Deloria's predictions:

"If America has done to us as it wishes others to do to her, then the future will not be bright. America is running up a great debt. It may someday see the wholesale despoilation of its land and people by a foreign nation." (CUSTER,p77)

"In transplanting Europe to these peaceful shores, the colonists violated the most basic principle of man's history: certain lands are given to certain peoples. It is these peoples only who can flourish, thrive, and survive on the land. Intruders may hold sway for centuries but they will eventually be pushed from the land or the land itself will destroy them." (CUSTER,p177)

Deloria's prescriptions:

"Definite commitments to fulfill extant treaty obligations to Indian tribes would be the first step toward introducing morality into American foreign policy.
Many things can immediately be done to begin to make amends for past transgressions. Passage of federal legislation acknowledging the rights of the Indian people as contained in the treaties can make the hunting and fishing rights of the Indians a reality.
When land has been wrongfully taken--and there are few places where it has not been wrongfully taken--it can be restored by transferring land now held by the various governmental departments within reservation boundaries to the tribes involved. Additional land in the public domain can be added to smaller reservations, providing a viable land base for those Indian communities needing more land." (CUSTER,p51-52)

"The Indian Claims Commission is, or should be, merely the first step in a general policy of restitution for past betrayals. Present policy objectives should be oriented toward restitution of Indian communities with rights they enjoyed for centuries before the coming of the white man." (CUSTER,p52)

"Cultural and economic imperialism must be relinquished. A new sense of moral values must be inculcated into the American blood stream. American society and the policies of the government must realistically face the moral problems created by the roughshod treatment of various segments of that society." (CUSTER,p53)

Like other modern peoples throughout the contemporary world,
African-Americans in territories north of the Rio Grande River where Native American claims to the land overlap and conflict with U.S. claims should re-learn a traditional tribal understanding of human existence: that human existence is existence in relations other created-creative-creaturely life, including especially the land.

Moreover,
as with all human peoples,
African-American peoples are called to be rightly related to other created-creative-creaturely life, including especially the land.

.

.

See the following:

• "Conquest and Colonialization: The Problem of America"
  by Luis N. Rivera-Pagan
  in APUNTES, Year 12, No. 2, Summer, 1992.
  
  
• "The Cosmic Race and Cosmic Grace: New Possibilities for Humankind"
  by Edwin E. Sylvest
  in APUNTES, Year 12, No. 2, Summer, 1992.
  
  
• "El Pueblo Latino and Its Identity: The Next Generation?"
  by David Maldonado
  in APUNTES, Year 15, No. 2, Summer, 1995.
  
  
• "The First to be Baptized in America"
  by Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo
  in APUNTES, Year 16, No. 3, Fall, 1996.
  
  
• THE FUTURE IS MESTIZO: LIFE WHERE CULTURES MEET
  (New York: Crossroads, 1992)
  by Virgilio Elizondo.
  
  
• MANANA: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY FROM A HISPANIC PERSPECTIVE
  (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990)
  by Justo Gonzalez.
  
  
• "A New Vision: Ministry Through Hispanic Eyes"
  by Luis G. Pedraja
  in APUNTES, Year 16, No. 2, Summer, 1996.
  
  
• "The Role of the Barrio in the Doctrine of Original Sin"
  by Miguel A. De La Torre
  in APUNTES, Year 16, No. 3, Fall, 1996.
  
  
• "The Year 2016: Where Will We Be by Then?"
  by Justo L. Gonzalez
  in APUNTES, Year 16, No. 2, Summer, 1996.
  
  
• Also, "Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement" is a TV production by the National Latino Communications Center, broadcast on KDTN channel 2, in Dallas, Texas, from 21:00 to 22:00 CDT on 5 May 1997.
  

.

According to the Kimochi Home Page
(at http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~ccambrid/kimochi.html on 28 December 1996):

"Kimochi, the organization, is a fusion of ideas and philosophies born of a joint American Indian and Asian American effort on the campus of the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1972. The name, Kimochi, is a Japanese word that reflects the meaning of "a feeling of good will.""

• [See the Kimochi Home Page at http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~ccambrid/kimochi.html]

[Also, for a Korean Minjung theology, see THE WOUNDED HEART OF GOD: THE ASIAN CONCEPT OF HAN AND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN (Nashville, Tenn: Abingdon Press, 1993) by Andrew Sung Park.]

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The End of Chapter Three