The Way of the Human BeingYale University Press, 1999 M01 1 - 235 pages From Native Americans, Europeans learned about corn and beans, toboggans and canoes, and finding their way around an unfamiliar landscape. Yet the Europeans learned what they wished to learn--not necessarily what the natives actually meant by their stories and their lives--says Calvin Luther Martin in this unique and powerfully insightful book. By focusing on their own questions, Martin observes, those arriving in the New World have failed to grasp the deepest meaning of Native America. Drawing on his own experiences with native people and on their stories, Martin brings us to a new conceptual landscape--the mythworld that seems unfamiliar and strange to those accustomed to western ways of thinking. He shows how native people understand the world and how human beings can and should conduct themselves within it. Taking up the profound philosophical challenge of the Native American "way of the human being," Martin leads us to rethink our entire sense of what is real and how we know the real. |
Contents
From all around me beauty has been restored | 25 |
From the south beauty has been restored | 52 |
From the west beauty has been restored | 104 |
From the north beauty has been restored | 160 |
Winter Count | 209 |
Notes | 219 |
Acknowledgments | 235 |
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Common terms and phrases
aboriginal Alaska American Angoon animals asked bear bearded seal beauty become begins Bethel biologists birds brown bear bush Alaska called caribou Cartier child dance dream Dreyer earth Einstein Eiseley electron Eskimos fear feel Fish and Wildlife flesh friends going grandfather Haida Hare hear human hunter hunting Ibid imagine Indian Inupiaq Jacques Cartier John Archibald Wheeler kass'aq killed knew Kopit land lived look Loren Eiseley mask meat Micmac mind missionaries Momaday moose mountain native Navajo never night Ojibwa once Oscar Paul John perception person plenipotential poplar bark prison Qavcicuaq quantum quantum mechanics reality river Robert Bringhurst Scott Momaday seals seems shape shapeshifted singing skin song spirit story superposition surely talk tell things tion Toksook Toksook Bay told Trickster tundra universe village walked western whale Wheeler wife winter woman words young Yukon-Kuskokwim delta Yup'ik Yupiit