Native American Thought and the Wisdom of the Particular

What Native American thought can teach us about how to be committed to truth without closing ourselves to what each new time, place, and experience can teach us

Note: I am using the term “Indian” throughout the body of the text because it is the term Vine Deloria Jr., the Sioux philosopher, and author I am drawing on, uses. I respect the term he chooses to refer to himself and his people.  

For most living within today’s culture, the realm of truth is the realm of the universal. We are taught from a young age that a true statement can universally apply across many or all particular circumstances. The laws of physics are true because they govern the movement of matter in all physical systems. A moral norm is true only if it applies to all cultures and all communities. Similarly, for most religious folk the religion they subscribe to is true because it represents the one universal truth of the origins and purpose of the cosmos. At first glance, this seems so obvious that it does not even need pointing out. If truth doesn’t imply universality then what else could truth mean?  Let’s consider for a moment that even this seemingly obvious assumption is not self-evident, but is instead a a feature of our particular cultural ethos.

In his book God is Red, American Indian philosopher Vine Deloria suggests just this, reasoning that there is an assumption contained in this notion that is incompatible with Indian cosmology. This assumption is that the world as a whole, in all times and all space, is governed by a set of universal, fixed laws and forces that can be grasped by the rational mind or through some kind of scientific methodology. Deloria writes that the American Indian sees the world instead “as a series of non­ homogeneous pockets of identity… because they represent different historical arrangements of emotional ener­gy.” For the Indian, there is simply no set of universal laws that govern all times and all places. Rather, the particular laws and norms that govern a particular space arise as a function of the historical, natural, and emotional forces that brought that particular space into being. In this way, Deloria suggests that the  Indian has a “space-centric” conception of truth. For Deloria, no revelation gained in one particular space or moment in history can be applied to all other times and spaces. Instead, our aim should be to develop a relationship with the particularities of the space we are in a way that allows us to gain the wisdom of how to move in harmony with that particular configuration energy.

Native religion, Deloria suggests, is centered around this development of a relationship with a particular holy place on the earth. (In this paragraph I will be drawing from this segment of an interview with Deloria:

I recommend  listening to Deloria explain this in his own words as well) Indian tribes have discovered many places that have, in Deloria’s own words, a “power” that feels “larger than yourself.” Indian religion revolves around developing a “vehicle” that allows the community to interact with and learn from the power in that space in a way that allows them to receive messages and wisdom from it. However, as mentioned before these communications and revelations that are gifted from a particular power spot are not understood as universal revelations which are true in all times and all places, they always communicate practical information concerning how to act or how to live in that particular place and at that particular time. Of course, a Western scientist or academic would likely meet Deloria with skepticism: What is this power? What is its cause? How do you know your feeling of being “larger than yourself” isn’t just subjective? Many would even suggest that if we cannot answer these questions we have to reject this phenomenon as unreal. In the background of these questions, however, lies the assumption that this power is something that can be comprehended by making use of our rational ability to distill conceptual laws and explanations. The Indian does not make this assumption. Deloria says that if you talk to a “good medicine man,” they will tell you that they have certain spirits to help them commune with the particular power spot and that what they do works but that they have no idea how it works.

The Indian is not concerned with universal explanations or theoretical models, they are concerned with what practically works in a particular power spot. Indian religion is not concerned with knowing but with skillful doing. And what makes an action skillful for them we might ask? Deloria answers this in God is Red writing,

“The Indian is confronted with a bountiful earth in which all things and experiences have a role to play. The task of the tribal religion, if such a religion can be said to have a task, is to determine the proper relationship that the people of the tribe must have with other living things and to develop self-discipline within the tribal community so that man acts harmoniously with other creatures”

What the revelations received in a power spot reveal, Deloria suggests, is the proper way to live and to act to maintain the unity and harmony of life, both within the tribe and between the tribe and the larger ecosystem in which they are situated. Such a view is in stark contrast to the modern motivation of “progress” in which we make use of science, technology, and social sciences, to improve and alter a natural world that is perceived as hostile and unsafe. Instead from the Indian point of view, the earth is already “bountiful,” is already complete, and is already in harmony. The human being does not need to improve or even understand it, rather the task of the human being is to simply, through listening, learn the norms of behavior which maintain that harmony and develop the self-discipline to live in line with the norms. 

What I am calling the wisdom of the particular is the ability to move with and be receptive to the wisdom already contained within a particular context, space, or environment. This is in direct contrast to understanding truth as a set of universal laws or norms that can be imposed onto all contexts, spaces, and times. Although Deloria mainly focuses on the way we can learn from and develop a relationship with physical places on the earth, if we extend this principle we will find that it does not negate the modern sciences and rational disciplines but helps us understand them more clearly. Both the social and natural sciences discover laws that seem to universally govern a certain domain of human experience. However, is the claim to absolute universality necessary? Do scientific laws help us understand our emotions, our relationships, or our spiritual lives? Do psychological laws help us understand the movement of the planets? The clear answer seems to be no. It seems to me that Deloria’s wisdom of the particular is not in opposition to the modern rational disciplines, but can instead help us to recontextualize the significance of their innovations and weed out the tendency to universalize inappropriately. Different disciplines discover laws that govern a particular domain of human experiences.

The wisdom of the particular reminds us that although we should respect the laws and norms governing a particular domain, it only leads to confusion to abstract those laws outside of that context and impose them on others when they are not appropriate. At its worst, this confusion can, and has, led to violence and even genocide. The universal claims that Jesus is the one savior, that democracy is the one just political system, and that the natural sciences are the only way to truth, have justified and continue to justify the labeling of communities that do not adopt these beliefs and practices as “primitive or “savage.” This is exactly what happened, and continues to happen, to Deloria’s people which is likely one of the reasons he is so sensitive to the danger of this way of thinking.  If we take seriously this wisdom of the particular that Deloria shares with us it shows us a way in which we can respect the scientific, religious, and political innovations of our own culture while avoiding the violence and arrogance that inevitably arises when we ossify these insights as universal metaphysical truths that can simply be imposed on all situations. Instead, we learn to respect what we have learned in the past but to always continue to listen and learn from the present.

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