It is easy to unmask New Age loonies. They love the words:
vibrations, christals, Gaia and holistic. If anywhere in a speech you pick those words, be certain the loony is a New Age follower
.
I am not Native American, however as any people in my country, I do have some native ancestors. However, loving my land as I do, I have a great interest in learning about the Native American culture, of my own country, of course. I have tried hard to learn something of the language, traditions, religion and arts, not to be accepted in a tribe, but to teach my kids to respect the land and the peoples were they were born. I love Mapuche poetry and songs, because of the rythm and sounding, for instance, and I try to understand what they mean.
Somehow knowing some facts make me very happy and connected with the land. Knowing things like the ancient names of the hills downtown my city, from were the ancient Inca trail passed or that that mountain was sacred and this other one had on top an pre-columbian fortress.
When I went for holydays last summer to visit a lake called Vichulafken, I was able to descomposse the name in Vicu=serpent and Laftken=lake, and I understood the name meant "lake with the shape of a serpent", which is the actual shape of that lake.
I don't know, things like that make me feel happy, and feel that life is a lot longer than our short personl lifes.
Pinguin
Edited by pinguin - 07-Feb-2007 at 08:05