Whitney Swaim - Native Americans (Outside Reading 2)

In Catherine Albanese's book America: Religions and Religion, Native American religion is discussed heavily. She articulates the concept of Indian religion quite well: "Indian nations typically had no word for religion because they did not separate the ordinary details of living from their sacred ceremonies. They saw their beliefs and activities as part of the same whole" (p. 20).
I would guess that Native Americans had words for terms like "spirituality" or "sacred," but it is interesting that the idea of religion has evolved mainly for the use of literate societies. Through texts we have been able to put our ideas on paper. Instead of expressing them to others in a collective fashion, we have begun expressing them in solitude on paper. This brings our spiritual ideas outside of our minds and into our world of products. The other day in class we discussed the cosmos structure as having the creator and then the "created" (people, animals, plants, nature, etc.). Paper, writing utensils, books, etc. are all human creations. They are part of this alternate reality that we have created. With writing, we are able to pull the sacred from the world of the "created" to the artificial world of our creations.