The way Native American spirituality looks as it is lived

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Product Description

Echoing the ancient sounds of the Native American oral tradition, this collection of essays offers a look at the Native American spirituality as it is lived. Wisdom keeper Gabriel Horn writes in praise of the primal mind, describing his wonder at the splendour of the natural world.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #910524 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 170 pages

From Booklist
Horn's moving essays afford a window on the way Native American spirituality looks as it is lived. A generous, searching writer, Horn never descends to polemic to make his nonetheless sharp points about the submersion of native or "primal" values in ones called civilized. Civilized is not a positive term in Horn's vocabulary, wherein it indicates not "an acceptable level of social etiquette and sophisticated thought" and "clean and organized ways of living" but rather a disruptive and alienating philosophy. When civilized, Horn holds, people forget how to "flow on the River of Time and Knowing" and remain intimately linked to the holy universe. Instead they begin to objectify and ultimately to harm the world from which they spring. Horn poignantly shows how harmful this objectification can be and also how difficult but rewarding it is to live, moment by shining moment, in a primal relationship to the world. Patricia Monaghan

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Customer Reviews

Brilliant book on Native American issues in modern society
'Contemplations of a Primal Mind' by Gabriel Horn was a watershed for me, and complete revelation which I had long been looking for.

As a non-Native American I was looking for a way to understand Native American culture, and particularly the situation Native Americans face living in modern US society.

This book gave me all that, really showing the difficulties being faced to preserve the Native American culture when under the bombardment of modern materialism and 'cultural values'.

It is a brilliant book, coupling those issues in with some of the very enlightening and spiritual aspects of the Native American culture.

I strongly recommend this book to all non-Native Americans (as well as Native Americans). It gives a story of Native American issues in modern society, devoid of any stereotypes or wishful thinking.

As a sequel to this book, I would give an even stronger recommendation to reading Gabriel Horn's first book, 'Native heart, An American Indian Oddyssey' (*****), which goes further into both the Native American spirituality and the struggles they face from the bigotry and sterotypes inherent of modern US society.