Sarah Nuber-Readings

Oral cultures experience sacred time and place much differently than literate or secular cultures. In our secular/literate cultures, a sacred place could be a church, a synagogue, temple or anywhere that some type or religious/spiritual practice takes place. In our culture, time is also related to major religions, we celebrate different events based on certain Christian holidays that have been carried on for years and years. In our literate society, we pay close attention to the time by using clocks and alarms, and this is much different from oral culture’s concept of time. In these cultures, space, rather than time is experienced through the changing of the seasons and by the different positions of the sun throughout the day.
In Native American cultures, there is not a clear-cut definition of sacred place, but it has been incorporated into many different religious ceremonies and practices. The Native Americans used different stories to create understandings of time and place. One example is the Trickster story, in this story the tricksters portrays the human struggle against the confinement that is felt by being bound to place (Gill 21). The trickster shows the meaning of the boundaries and relationships between bounded places that give order to human life (Gill 21). Boundaries are limits or borders, so the stories that are hold in Native American cultures create limits for these cultures. Native American cultures also create their villages, landscapes, ceremonial grounds and home to copy the form and processes of their world (Gill 21). The Gill text discusses how the Delaware/Lenape Big House is an example of how a structure represents other processes important to the daily religious lives of an oral culture. The lodge is designed so that the doors face to the east and west and this has to do with the rising and setting of the sun, which represents the beginning and ending of things (Gill 21) This ceremony also takes place for twelve nights, which represents the twelve months of the year. In comparison to literate cultures, oral cultures differ greatly in their concepts of sacred time and place.