RELG 270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mother Goddess, Manifest Destiny, Lake Ontario
3 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Most indigenous peoples are/were hunter-gatherers to some extent. Tends to be local and have much less ecological impact than agriculture. Supports much smaller populations of around 10-100 people. Susceptible to malnutrition, epidemic disease, and natural disaster. European attempts to adopt and adapt indigenous ideas about nature have sometimes been problematic. Harmful to indigenous sovereignty struggles and conservation efforts. Decontextualized ideas and practices being marketed to non-indigenous peoples. European ideologies existed or were created to justify colonization and destruction. Greater numbers, pathogen exposure and resistance, iron usage, horses. Manifest destiny , pursuit of european definition of progress . Creation narratives, often involving turtle or birds diving in to bring up the land. Culture heroes who taught skills and trickster figures (often coyote or raven) No concept of nature being separate from society. Power of environmental phenomena over human life was obvious and acknowledged. Spiritual existence was inseparable from the natural world. Human-nature interaction, to a large extent, constitutes religion.
