This week, I found the lessons emphasized in the Popol Vuh particularly interesting. There are many messages of humbleness sprinkled throughout the text. Often we see characters with inflated hubrises and greed that often meet less than ideal ends. At first the concept of this "underworld" was a bit difficult for me to grasp, but the more I read, I soon came to just accept it. Throughout the passages, there is extensive interaction and communication between the beings and animals. This perhaps shows the connection and closeness that Natives have towards animals and the earth. Also, the animals are often clever and are capable of outsmarting each other and even the beings. I think that this encourages respect for animals because they are also thoughtful creatures.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Testing,Testing 1 2 3
I chose the the title "Earth, Sky and everything in Between" because I feel like organic elements will be a huge part of the Native American literature we will explore this quarter. More over, after having read parts of the Popol Vuh, I realized just how integral these elements are in everyday life and how they are given meaning and life in these creationist stories. But perhaps, the title also revels some of my biases or misunderstanding of native American culture. It is often perceived as natural, unchanging and always at one with the earth. My perception of Native culture has been shaped by media depictions and the brief chunks of history that I've picked up in school throughout the years. I look forward to seeing how my notions will measure up to reality.
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This is a good post. I think you are right about the difficulty of thinking through why the land and earth are important to indigenous people without falling into the trap of a mystical natural Indian stereotype. I imagine we might think of it like every other group -- some people in the group do feel strongly about the natural environment and some people do not.
ReplyDeleteYour reading of humility and animals is interesting, and I wonder if we might be able to tie those two together. I'm thinking in particular of the wooden people when the animals turn on them. I wonder if there are other places where the animals relate to the idea of hubris in the text.
I'm having some trouble in how I'm composing my paper because I'm trying to be very careful about how I see things, in particular Indian culture. But as you wrote on my first draft, we cannot infer generalizations about a people from the actions of a few. Yet, there is part of me that can't help/ wants to believe that there is some kind of larger significance. I think it's because of my other disciplines (history) that always call for some informed inferences from a given set of information. I think this will be my greatest challenge in this class. I suppose I'm grappling with how to approach this class, as it's part history, part sociology, part English, etc.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point and this class covers a lot of interdisciplinary ground. As I told someone else in the class, whenever you feel inclined to say something like, "Mayan culture values ___" think more in terms of saying, "The Popol Vuh suggests that Mayan culture values ____." There is a subtle, but important, distinction in those two sentences. One you can draw inferences from because you are an informed reader of the Popol Vuh. The other would require years of research and/or experience to be able to conclude. I hope this helps just a little!
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