American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The act of creation in the Mayan Popol Vuh, as in the Judeo-Christian Bible, begins with language. Words are spoken and the world is created. So intricately is language tied in with spirituality in the Popol Vuh that the gods created humankind so that humans could, through language, pray to the gods and “keep their days.” A culture’s religious practices evolve along with its language, and the language absorbs the nuances of that particular religion. A culture’s language is filled with the inextricable subtleties of its particular worldview. In a sense, it is hard to discern where religion begins and language ends. In regard to Tlingit culture of southeast Alaska, Nora and Richard Dauenhauer have noted in their introduction to Haa Kusteeyi (Our Culture): Tlingit Life Stories a type of “spiritual malaise” within Tlingit communities. Perhaps this spiritual malaise is directly related to the impending death of the Tlingit language and the worldview sustained by the language. One of the most destructive and long-lasting effects of colonization is the purposeful devaluation and destruction of Indian languages and, by extension, of traditional Indian beliefs. By focusing specifically on the situation of the Tlingit language and examining past attitudes toward the language, it can be demonstrated how the now nearly moribund Tlingit language fell to such a state. Since language is the carrier of culture, the implications of impending language death on Tlingit culture and the prospect of English filling the resulting void, are matters of grave concern. Language sustains a culture’s religion, its ethics, and its particular world- view. Even a worldwide religion such as Christianity evolves as it embraces a new language; for example, the Christianity of first-century Aramaic Palestine or of fourth-century Roman Italy, differs greatly from the Christianity of English-speaking America in the twentieth century. Though modern-day American Christians may not want to admit that their beliefs differ greatly, or at all, from the initial beliefs of Christianity’s founders, the truth is that a contemporary American Christian ceremony would be as foreign to a first-century Christian as modern English would be to his or her ancient Aramaic, Greek, or Latin counterparts. Because of the unique relationship that religion and language have within a culture, religion adapts to time and place in a similar fashion to language.