White Americans like to pretend that everything is sacred to Native Americans. To their credit, many Native Americans pretend that their ancestors did, too.

But is this true? Is everything sacred?

The issue comes up frequently in Yellowstone, where interpretation of Native American experience has gone from, “Those simple people were too scared of the geysers to come to Yellowstone, to “Obviously, they were so simple that everything in Yellowstone must have had some kind of sacred or spiritual significance for them.” Obviously, Native American can’t enjoy nature for its beauty.
Aren’t they both equally as bad when it comes to simplifying indigenous peoples’ thoughts?

The Cairngorms in Scotland are awfully impressive, and I appreciate that about them, but do I find them sacred? I have relatives buried in a cemetery, but is that place really considered sacred ground for me? I respect it as a place we put our dead, but would I sacrifice a goat to the Gods there? In many of the accounts of Native Americans I’ve read, many thought Yellowstone was pretty cool and awfully utilitarian. But sacred? Many never came to the area because of its remoteness, not because they were afraid of the gods getting pissed off. They had very practical views of the geysers and hot springs: they used the waters to bath in or to soften the horns of bighorn sheep in order to bend them into bows. They buried people in the park who died on long journeys, not because they were buried specifically IN the park.

Can’t Native Americans appreciate something for its beauty and resources, without considering it sacred? We don’t require white people to consider something sacred in order to interact with it; why insist on that myth for indigenous minorities? Could they also have looked at the Grand Tetons and have seen it as a mountain to conquer rather than to fear? My guess is that human spirit prevails, and that Native Americans were climbing Devil’s Tower long before white people showed up to do it, no matter what the legends say.

This can extend beyond the North American indigenous population. Throughout the world, art (as created by “primitive” people who existed more than, say, 500 years ago in Europe, Asia and Africa) is reduced to the spiritual. Those rock carvings MUST have religious significance, because those people would have NEVER done that for fun or to create something merely aesthetically pleasing. Those temples MUST have religious significance, because those people would never build something like that for personal satisfaction.

Discussions of Newgrange in Ireland, the pyramids of Egypt, Chichen Itza, Great Zimbabwe, all center around gods and priests and sacrifice. Never do the venture into the realm of art and beauty such as they are. But was The Thinker sculpted to sit in a church? Does George Bumann sculpt in order to express his love of god? Did Van Gogh paint because he was divinely told to? If we civilized white people can create art simply because we feel like it, why can’t anyone else?