To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/10/27 05:18
Subject: [K-list] TIME (long quote)
From: Adele Chatelain
On 1999/10/27 05:18, Adele Chatelain posted thus to the K-list:
"Time in aboriginal (Native American) California seems to
have
been similar to Time among the Nuer whom we discussed
earlier, in that there was no explicit notion of time per
se. Events did not take place at some specific point on a
clock or calendar. Insofar as specified dates were fixed
they were so many days, moons, or years from some other
event. But for the most part the timing of events was
determined by their actual occurence rather than some point
in an artifical scale. Months, viz., moons, were often
named, but rather than having what for us have become
meaningless labels, they tended to take their name from
natural events with which they coincided: "ice on streams,"
"growth
begins," "bulbs mature," etc. Reconings often differed and
there was no standard but nature's by which to settle
disputes. When the acorns actually fell, argument as to the
acorn moon was decided. There seems to have been little
concern or need for exact precision with time units of less
than a day. And in general people were unconcerned with
their age or the time since an event which had occureed
several years previously; the elapsed time simply was not
important.
The concern with the generic aspect of creation discussed
above is reflected in the image of time and in the various
means of power acquisition. Among those peoples in which
individuals were visited by dream helpers, these helpers,
whether animals, plants, or personified natural phenomena
such as Thunder or Fire, were the generic aspect of the
helper, rather than a particular manifestation of it.
Similarly, among those peoples who acquired power by
visiting their culture heroes, it was the generic aspect of
the hero that they encountered. To do this it was deemed
necessary to travel into mythic time (we would say 'back
into,' but I wonder if that is correct) when they were not
yet particularized. Here at the creation, one could
encounter the undifferentiated beings who control the
world. And also, it was here that one was closer to the
full undiminshed source of power.
Necessary for this nexus of ideas about Time,
Classification, and Causality is a conception of dreaming
quite alien to white thinking...
whites frequently survey boundaries in straight lines
(space) and
also use natural geographic features uch as watersheds or
streams as
boundaries...
...We know from the archaeological record that culture and
environmental changes in California were remarkably slow
over the past 4000 years. Such constant conditions would
have promoted an image of time in which each year within a
person's life span would be seen as essentailly a repetition
of previous ones " (hence no 'past' is used, but rather
'repetition' which implies past but not directly).
from: WORLD VIEW by Michael Kearney (U of California)
Chandler and Sharp Pubs. 1984
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