The Sacred and the Secular in Four Novels
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The four books, Mary Crow Dog's Lakota Woman, N. Scott Momaday's House of Dawn, Ricardo Pozas' Juan The Chamula and Thomas Sanchez's Rabbit Boss illuminate the fact that the sacred and secular are inextricably interwoven together in Native American culture. Unlike modern contemporary society that compartmentalizes the sacred and secular as mutually exclusive entities in life, the Native Americans view the sacred as a vital part of their environment, their existence and their identity. When the White people encroach upon the Native Americans' lives by decimating their sacred sites and forbidding them to engage in their sacred activities, the Native Americans' sense of identity begins to disintegrate. In their books, Crow Dog, Momaday and Sanchez aptly capture the tragedy of Native Americans who are stripped of their religious beliefs and thus their identity. For Native Americans, the sacred is an integral part of their everyday existence and the environment. In Juan, Pozas depicts how Juan's mother begins the day by "greet[ing] the first rays of the suną kneel[ing] down to kiss the ground, and beg[ging] the sun to protect us and give us health" (47). Abel, one of the protagonists in Momaday's novel feels inspired by the colored canyons to construct a creation song (59). The Native Americans also consider animals such as the golden eagles to be sacred: "Even so, deprived of the sky, the eagle soars in man's imagination; there is divine malice in the wild eyesą" (Momaday 57).
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Approximate Word count = 1030
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)
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