American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Much of the literature of North American Indians is devoted to detailing the differences that exist in cultural orientations between the native peoples and the primarily white majority. Attention has been focused on differing approaches to and perceptions of time, property, child rearing, family organization, work, religion, sexual conduct, nature, and a host of other less prominent cultural and social variables. Little consideration, however, has been given to the fact that whites, as a heavy industrialized technological society, have relied primarily, if not exclusively, upon science and scientific interpretations to bring us into relationship with and control over the natural environment. In contrast to this, Indian groups of North America have traditionally related to their natural environments through the use of magic and ritual and have not shared in a detached, objective, analytical view of what nature is or what purposes it might serve.