Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a literary and topical analysis of a creation story of the Nuu-chah-nulth people, of Northwest Canada. The importance of this book is an attempt to recognize the cultural forms of religion or spirituality before the access of Western culture and to understand why they had come to accept Christianity differently from the Western world. The primary aim of this book was to study of the Nuu-chah-nulth origin myth and discover the continuing cultural/religious ideas stored in the Nuu-chah-nulth myth of origin. The book deals with the worldview of the Nuu-chah-nulth and religious thoughts obtained from their oral traditions. The beginning part of this book explored the cultural bases of how and why the tribal origin myths can inform us of an understanding of their worldview, religious, and theological concepts. The later part discusses what kind of theological, philosophical, relational, and cultural ideas emerge from the Nuu-chah-nulth origin myth. More specifically, the study explores the philosophical ideas of the Nuu-chah-nulth thoughts, examining how their views of God, or Creator, compare with those of other religions. It also looks at the cultural factors underlying the worldviews, and their influences on the formation of their religious ideas. Furthermore, observing their linguistic habits associated in expressions used in the origin myths, the study adjudicated how the contact with western Christianity altered the forms and contents of their myths, which could also shed light on how the Nuu-chah-nulth culturally appropriated Christianity.
