Chelsea Huber - Lane's Three Approaches

Landscapes of the Sacred

Lane has three approaches for understanding the medicine wheel as sacred.
The first approach is called ontological. This approach looks at time and place throughout the history of a culture. This could be the stories that grandmas tell their children and their children's children. Or, the pictures of great geographical places that have been drawn on the inside of cave walls. No matter how the message is carried down, it builds up power and influence.
The second approach is the cultural approach. This approach claims that a sacred place is somewhere "people are willing to fight and even die [for]" (Lane 43). This is most clearly viewed in the situation of Israel, where people have been willing to die for the land for centuries. This extreme value shows that the culture is putting a lot of emphasis on the sacredness of the land.
The third approach is called the phenomenological approach. This view places the emphasis not on the history of the culture of a place, but rather the topographical and geographical importance of the land. This approach is most interested in how the place its self is sacred, unrelated to the happenings or ideas of humans. I feel as though it is difficult to separate the notion of humans interacting with place and sacredness.