Indian Dreams 9/24/07 Bryan Trumble

I found one of the quotes from the movie Black Robes particularly interesting. I believe it was the chief who said "Dream is more real than life or death. A dream is real. It must be obeyed."
This quote struck me as interesting because it seems on one hand very similar to western thought, and on the other almost completely opposite. The ‘modern’ culture of the world is so extremely different from the culture portrayed of the Algonquin natives in the movie Black Robes. The Indians lived off of the land and prospered when the land prospered and suffered when the land suffered. This helped them to develop a very close relationship with Mother Earth and influenced their spiritual views about the earth. In this sense they came to hold their dreams as sacred foretellings by the spirits of what was to come. They viewed the state of dreaming as the most real and considered someone weird if they could not dream. In short a dream for them was like a revelation and they were supposed to happen quite often.
Similarly the west views spiritual awakenings as extremely important. All of the Abrahamic traditions begin with a divine revelation from God. This revelation is held in the highest regard and there are generally multiple revelations throughout the sacred texts. The revelations are considered some of the most real experiences one can have, the point at which they are most closely connected with the divine. Yet these experiences occur generally while the person is awake.
In contrast the western view of dreams is much less spiritual, and viewed with a much more scientific lens. They are viewed as random mental activity, and held with very little regard as to their importance, and one would certainly be considered weird to think that their dreams were foretelling the future. In this way the west seems to value revelations, yet since they believe that the revelations generally come while one is awake they hold dreams with little prophetic regard.