The Importance of Storytelling for the Survival of Native American Religion

Master's Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Hildesheim (Institut für englische Sprache und Literatur), language: English, abstract: In my Master's Thesis I will refer to my Bachelor's Thesis, which was about 'Native American Women'. I analyzed how Native American women lived in their communities and especially how their role was and is in contrast to what Europeans and European Americans think it was. I found that the role of women in Native America was in many ways different from the role of European women at the same time. After I became engrossed in the topic of Native American culture and Native American women in particular I became curious about what Native Americans believed, what their philosophy was and how they organized their spiritual life. This is why I decided to research this and focus on Native American beliefs, ideology and philosophy of life in my Master's Thesis. In my thesis I will not concentrate on one or several special tribes. Instead I will try to give a comprehensive survey of Native American religion in general. While doing so, I will always look for and give adequate examples that illustrate what I want to convey.I will divide this thesis into three parts. The first part will be devoted to the history of Native American religion. In my opinion it is not possible to look at another culture's religion without finding out the story of its religion first. I want to do research on what Native Americans believed through the course of time and believe today, if their belief system has changed and what consequences white contact brought. I want to find out how Native American religion as it used to be before white contact developed and survived. Furthermore, I want to discover if Natives today still have the same beliefs as their ancestors or if most of them converted to the Christian religion and the Western way of looking at the world. I want to find out if any aspects changed over time, which aspects endured and why. Also I want to find out if all Native tribes have the same religious background or if their beliefs and practices differ. To do this I will provide an overview over Native American practices and talk about their significance for Native American religion. The second part will be concerned with storytelling and Native American religion. This will be the main part, which will revolve around the overall key topic of this thesis: "The Importance of Storytelling for the Survival of Native American Religion".