Values+and+Status



Mitakuye oyasin! We are all related! It isn't too late. We still have time to recreate and change the value system of the present. We must! Survival will depend on it. Our Earth is our original mother. She is in deep labor now. There will be a new birth soon! The old value system will suffer and die. It cannot survive as our mother earth strains under the pressure put on her. She will not let man kill her. __** The First Nation's Peoples had a value system. There were only four commandments from the Great Spirits: **__ **1.**Respect Mother Earth **2.**Respect the Great Spirit **3.**Respect our fellow man and woman **4.**Respect for individual freedom We must all stand together as a force of love. Be united NOW. There is only one way. Communication. Knowledge. Arm yourself with truth, love and perseverence. Extend your family. Join with others in giving. We are all related. People of the earth take back your heritage. I am not speaking of skin color or religion. Our heritage is this earth... Our heritage is also extended beyond this earth into the heavens where the spirit once lived before our birth into this world. You are bound to both. ** THE TEN INDIAN COMMANDMENTS! **** 1. ** Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect! **2.**Remain close to the Great Spirit **3.**Show great respect for your fellow beings **4.**Work together for the benefit of all mankind! **5.**Give assistance and kindness wherever needed **6.**Do what you know to be right **7.**Look after the well-being of mind and body **8.**Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good **9.**Be truthful and honest at all times **10.**Take full responsiblity for your actions.....  // We thank the Moon and the stars, who give us their light when the Sun retires.... We thank the Great Spirit, incarnation of all kindness, who directs all things for the good of Its children." // â€”from an Iroquois prayer  ([]  __**Orientation to present -**__ Traditionally most Indians have oriented themselves to the present and the immediate tasks at hand. This orientation stems from the deep philosophical emphasis on //being// rather than //becoming.// Present needs and desires tend to take precedence over vague future rewards. __**Time orientation -**__ In the Indian world, things happen when they are ready to happen. Time is relatively flexible and generally not structured into compartments as it is in modern society. __**Mutualism -**__ As a value, attitude, and behavior, mutualism permeates everything in the traditional Indian social fabric. Mutualism promotes a sense of belonging and solidarity with group members cooperating to gain group security and consensus. __**Patience -**__ In Native American life, the virtue of patience is based on the belief that all things unfold in time. Like silence, patience was a survival virtue in earlier times. __**Quietness -**__ Quietness or silence is a value that serves many purposes in Indian life. Historically the cultivation of this value contributed to survival. In social situations, when they are angry or uncomfortable, many Indians remain silent. Non-Indians sometimes view this trait as indifference, when in reality, it is a very deeply embedded form of Indian interpersonal etiquette. __**Personal differences**__ **-** Native Americans traditionally have respected the unique individual differences among people. Common Native American expressions of this value include staying out of others’ affairs and verbalizing personal thoughts or opinions only when asked. Returning this courtesy is expected by many Native Americans as an expression of mutual respect. __**Spirituality**__ __-__ Religious thought and action are integrated into every aspect of the sociocultural fabric of traditional Native American life. Spirituality is considered a natural component of everything. __**Nonverbal orientation -**__ Traditionally most Indians have tended to prefer listening rather than speaking. Talking for talking’s sake is rarely practiced. Talk, just as work, must have a purpose. Small talk and light conversation are not especially valued except among very close acquaintances.
 * FULL MOON PRAYER **

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__**Status**__
In some places tribal organizations are established on a clan or a gentile basis; in other regions a system of village communities was developed; and in still others pueblos or village communities were founded. From these different modes of life, influenced by varying environment and experiences, many new departures, resulting in unlike issues, were made. For the reason that the elementary group, the family, whence the other units are directly or mediately derived, is always preserved, coincidences are not infrequent. it is found that in such a tribe citizenship consisted in being by birth or adoption (q. v.) a member of a clan, and membership by birth in a clan was traced only through the mother and her female ancestors; hence it was solely through the mother that the clan was preserved and kept distinct from every other. But although the child acquired his birth-rights only through his mother, singularly enough it was through the father that his or her kinship was extended beyond his own into that of his father's clan, which owed to the offspring of its sons certain important obligations, which bound these two clans together not only by marriage but by the stronger tie of a recognized kinship. By this process the clans of the tribe were bound together into a tribal unity. By the organization of the clans of the tribe into two exogamic groups, the possible number of clans between which the said mutual rights, privileges, and duties of fatherhood might subsist were in most cases reduced by about half; but this reduction was not the object of this dualism in tribal structure. The wise men of the early Iroquois, having endowed the bodies and elements of their environment and the fictions of their brains with human attributes, regarded these bodies and phenomena as anthropic beings, and so they imputed to theta even social relations, such as kinship and affinity, and not the least of these imputed endowments was that of sex-the principles of fatherhood and motherhood. These beings were therefore apportioned in relative numbers to the two sexes. Even the Upper and the Lower and the Four Quarters were regarded as anthropic beings. They, too, were male and female; the Sky was male and a father; and the Earth was female and a mother; the Sun, their elder brother, was male, and the Moon, their grandmother, was female. And as this dual principle precedent to procreation was apparently everywhere present, it was deemed the part of wisdom, it would seem, to incorporate this dual principle by symbolism into the tribal structure, which was of course devised to secure not only welfare to its members living and those yet unborn, but also to effect the perpetuation of the tribe by fostering the begetting of offspring.

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