Abstract

This dissertation explores key cultural elements in the indigenous Sami and Basque cultures, in order to discern what wisdom in living their lifeways might offer to peoples of Indo-European descent. As the only living indigenous peoples not colonized by Indo-European speaking cultures, the Basque and Sami cultures may provide contemporary Europeans and Euro-Americans insights into our own ancestral pre-Indo-European, indigenous roots. Using a multidisciplinary approach using feminist theory, linguistics, archaeomythology, religious studies and philosophy to examine their oral traditions, religion, political organization, gender relations, philosophical worldview and cosmology, we are able to infer and reconstruct a broader picture of their prehistory. Comparing their cultures to that of the invading Indo-Europeans, or Kurgans, we are able to recognize key differences in the two trains of cultural development. We begin to understand how the Sami and the Basque adapted in order to survive the imperialization and colonization they endured. Practices that have been conserved, although submerged, are now being revisited as the Sami and Basque peoples participate in a cultural revival of earlier traditions. It is possible for us in the West to learn from their "re-membering", how we ourselves might adapt more gender-balanced economics, and nature-embedded cosmologies, worldviews and religious/spiritual beliefs