Gregory Cajete

(Kivaki Press, 1994)

Look to the Mountain offers educators a remarkably fresh perspective on the challenges facing schools in contemporary society. Dr. Gregory Cajete, a Tewa Indian from New Mexico, presents a lucid introduction to Native American educational practices, including a thorough overview of the key cultural assumptions underlying indigenous ways of teaching. He shares important legends and stories from various tribes, explainingtheir cultural, psychological, and spiritual significance. Yet this book is more than a fascinating ethnographic study; it is a compelling call for Americans to examine the cultural assumptions that underlie the mounting problems of our society. Modern culture, says Cajete, “must come to terms with the conditioning inherent in its educational systems that contribute to the loss of a shared integrative metaphor of Life. This loss, which may ultimately lead to a social/cultural/ecological catastrophe, should be a key concern of every American.” Look to the Mountain portrays a truly life-centered education that organically integrates the individual person within larger contexts of community, nature, and spirituality.

The purpose of education in tribal cultures is to connect people to their heritage and to their distinct place on earth. Cajete describes how this is achieved through “mythopoetic” rather than reductionistic teaching methods, including storytelling, sacred art, ritual, immersion in nature and simply through the daily involvement of young people in the life of the adult community. Education is not seen as a technical process to be managed by specialists but as a heroic journey, a challenging quest that each individual undertakes with the support and guidance of the community.

Cajete emphasizes the organic balance between cultivating individuality (“personal power”) through diverse and flexible teaching methods, and leading the individual to understand that people are essentially “social beings living in relation to one another. Our physical and biological survival is intimately interwoven with the communities that we create and that create us” (p. 166).lndigenous education is, above all, concerned with such relationships, based upon a profound respect for the rhythms and patterns of nature and the ways these are expressed archetypally both culturally and through the individual psyche. “Nothing in contemporary modem educational experience,” observes Cajete, “comes close to affecting and engaging individuals as deeply and multi-dimensionally” (p. 133). Clearly, there are powerful lessons here for educators struggling to cope with the moral and existential alienation of youths in the modern world.

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