Primal Religions 2018

When watching the documentary on the Navajo, I was very interested. I grew up relatively cognoscente of the traditions of my tribe (Black Foot), but was rarely introduced to those of other nations. I really liked how the film showed how matriarchal the tribe was and how strong the women appeared. Often, I feel women from oral cultures are misrepresented as submissive and quiet. These women in this film were very out spoken. I also liked how the film showed the literate culture clashing with the oral one when the 'hippie' teens were singing on the ritual grounds. I felt this was a very important scene because it shows that different groups of people can peaceably understand each other.

While watching this film I was struck not only by the interactions between the literate cultures and the oral one, but also by the distinct gendered roles. In both cultures, it is common that women are more domestic and men are in the public sphere but this film made the Native American tribe very gender specific. The men were in positions of power and took care of all the decision making. The women cooked and cleaned and took care of children. This however seems widely inaccurate. When the men are gone, how would the women get by if all they know how to do is maintain the domestic sphere? I am not sure if the films interpretation of the gender roles in this specific tribe are accurate, but I feel that within oral cultures and cultures that rely heavily on every individual it would be hard to have such distinct roles.

Dream Time is very fascinating to me. The understanding and use of it in oral religions versus literate ones is so different. The concept of a mystical realm with spiritual ancestors/gods reside and where stories come from is consistent throughout religions. In oral religions, Dream Time holds the truth and serves as the foundation for rituals and myths useful to those that follow the religion. In literate religions, it is very similar except many consider Dream Time to be fables and actual dreams. With literate religions it seems that Dream Time is related to fiction novels with good moral information unlike in oral religions. It is crazy to see that the understanding of such a similar concept can be so different between an oral culture and a literate one.

When I think of language, I think of oral along with written. Ong says there are 3000 languages in the world and 78 have written text. This blows my mind because with all of the literature out there one would think that most of the languages would be represented. It also shows me how shut off we are as a society to so many other parts of the world. A huge amount of people do not think about language the way we do with a literate language. Along with this, a lot of people relate and understand the world in ways that I do not. Without literature it makes so many other aspects of language so much more important. Things like dialect, tone, speed of speech, and body language have increased meaning in languages that do not contain literature.

Growing up, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I never felt like I had community. I still get jealous when I hear people talking about how close they are with their family or how they have such a close group of friends. I could never make connections like that and I could never understand having those kinds of connections. After learning about different cultures in this class, I see that a lot of them do have community but they also get their sense of belonging from nature. That is something I can relate to. I have always felt the most relaxed and the most at home when I am in the mountains. It doesn't matter if I'm hiking, laying in my hammock, or just laying out looking out at the stars. I have never felt more of a connection to anything else than I do when I am out in nature. Nature is just this incredible force that feels like it can do just about anything. I may not feel like I belong in any one particular place, but I always feel some sense of belonging in nature and ...

Growing up, I always heard grown ups talking about things that were sacred in church or in our family. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find out what made these things so sacred. I could not understand the religious sacred items because I was never really religious. I just went with the flow. The items that my family considered "sacred" were not important to me because I never had much of a connection with the people in my family. So I was left wondering what sacred actually meant. Eventually I realized that sacred referred to something of great importance or value to a person. Something that was sacred was significant to that person. Recently, I have done some self reflecting on what I would consider sacred. What I consider to be important and significant to me is not an object. To me, my sacred item is music. It is my essence, my soul, my heart. Music will always be the most important thing in my life because when I am at my worst moments, just overwhelmed by everythin...

People in western cultures, especially in the United States, do not know much, if anything at all, about any oral tradition. They probably wouldn't be able to name one primal or oral religion. I know for the longest time, I couldn't name any. My knowledge of different cultures is still very limited. However, after taking this class, I've noticed how often oral cultures pop up in western culture. We see them in movies, TV, and videogames. I see them a lot in videogames. Far Cry 3 had a fictional one that seemed to be based off of multiple real life cultures. The tatau in the game was based off of the Samoan tatau (tattoo). A lot of videogames will have fictional oral cultures but they had to be inspired by something real. That is the way all fiction goes. A lot of it is based on some form of truth. It's just amazing to see how oral cultures inspire things in our culture even though we do not actually know anything about them. It just shows how powerful spoken word is. St...