N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa Elder) on the sacred

Here the Pulitzer prize winner N. Scott. Momaday speaks about the importance of the sacred, especially the concept of place as sacred, a fundamental tenant of native American indigenous philosophy. Echoing the words of Marcia Elliad (Romanian writer) he says...The sacred in all times is the revelation of the real; an encounter with that which saves us by giving meaning to our existence. In otherwords, in order for our existence to have meaning we must reconnect with and protect that which is sacred. This is a hard concept to understand in a society that relegates sacredness to the church and essentially removes God from the natural world by making him solely the creator and not the inhabitor of all creation. If we hold to that idea, we would have to treat the planet in a sacred (or at least respectful) way, something akin to the way some (if not all) native americans did before having their culture largely obliterated through contact with the european; every particle of the natural world embued with the sacred. Follow the link for an audio file of this talk

http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/program01.html