STORIES FROM INDIGENOUS CULTURES 97
groups, each with unique and individual histories, cultures and
languages (Brown 1992).
In indigenous cultures, the arts belong to the entire community
and are experienced together to celebrate and mourn the passages
of human life as well as to honor the seasons and cycles of nature
and the movement of celestial bodies in the sky. In these cultures
singing, dancing, drumming, ritual, enactment and all of the activities
of creative making are part of a cosmology that honors the
human relationship with each other and with the more-than-human
world. Artistic making is integral to their scientific, spiritual and
philosophical understanding of human experience, embracing an
epistemology that includes many ways of knowing and forms of
knowledge (Brown 1992). Among all of the languages of the Native
Americans there is no word for art (Highwater 1981). Indigenous
cultures worldwide have no word for art because art is an integral
aspect of life itself (Shiner 2001).
The authors wish to emphasize that to speak of any indigenous
culture requires, first of all, a great sense of humility in the face of the
diversity, richness and complexity of these many cultures. Attempting
to understand concepts from a culture that is different from our
own is inevitably fraught with challenges. Language differences,
in particular, frequently lead to distortion and misunderstandings.
Despite our best and most sincere intentions to comprehend cultural
differences, we are always looking through the lens of our own
cultural worldview. Although we have had the privilege over many
years of spending time with a number of indigenous elders, healers,
artists and teachers, we realize how little we really understand about
the complex worldviews that underlie their sophisticated beliefs
and practices related to the arts and healing and to the very nature
of reality.
Misunderstanding and exploitation
Misunderstanding, denigration and exploitation of indigenous
peoples has been a common experience (Calderon 2014; Deloria