Teaching mindfully: a spirituality of collaboration.

In her 1986 book The Sacred Hoop, Laguna scholar and University of California professor Paula Gunn Allen describes the "sacred, ritual ways of the American Indian peoples" as an example of "a worldwide culture that predates western systems derived from the 'civilization' model," such as the sacred and tribal cultures of Tibet, the trans-Caucasus (including the Mediterranean and its western descendants in Brittany, Normandy, England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland), Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Africa. [1] Allen argues that these "tribal worldviews are more similar to one another than any of them are to the patriarchal worldview, and they have a better record of survival." [2] These ancient cultures assume collaborative, rather than individualized or isolated, teaching and learning. "In American Indian thought, God is known as the All Spirit, and other beings are also spirit--more spirit than body, more spirit than mind. The natural state of existence is whole": The universe itself is "circular ... and dynamic," and within it "all things are related and ... of one family." [3] Collaboration and community are essential for both spiritual and physical well-being. The ritual or sacred centers of tribal spiritualities (for example, the Lakota sacred pipe, the Kiowa Grandmother bundles, the Cherokee ceremonial fires, and the Pueblo plaza) possess "nonrational power to unite or bind diverse elements into a community, a psychic and spiritual whole": Thus the ritual and spiritual life of tribal peoples focus on changing "a person from an isolated ... state," which is seen as "diseased," to one of "health," understood as "incorporation" in the community. [4]

Tribal Understandings of Community and Collaboration

Tribal consciousness and social structure differ "enormously from that of the contemporary western world": Concepts of family, community, gender roles, power, and bonding and belonging "distinctly understood in a tribal matrix ... [are] very different from those current in modern America." [5] Kinship ties, which require "peacefulness and cooperation among people," are important "in the customary ordering of social interaction." [6] However, "among American Indians, Spirit-related persons are perceived as more closely linked than blood-related persons." [7] This deeply affects the way that community is understood. In particular, "the meaning most often given to the concept [of community] in traditional tribal cultures" is "those who are of a similar clan and Spirit; those who are encompassed by a particular Spirit-being." [8] Collaboration and community, then, are inherently spiritual. There is no separation between the pedagogical, the social, and the spiritual in such a worldview.

Spirits are understood as directing individual action "(through dreams, visions, direct encounter, or possession of power objects such as stones, shells, masks, or fetishes)." [9] Therefore, marital, family, and clan relationships are based on spiritual connections and spiritual guidance rather than purely civil, sexual, or genealogical concerns, making them more fluid than in non-Indian social systems. Women and men didn't necessarily spend a great deal of time living together. Traditionally, family-band-clan groups worked together in practical matters of mundane survival, such as to construct living arrangements; to produce or procure ...