The Navajo traded and the Apache raided. Maslow's second level -- security needs -- relates well to those tribes whose culture was in growing corn, squash, and beans. They needed security and safety from the tribes like the Apache that raided Indian camps for food. They didn't need everything on Maslow's list (health insurance, steady employment) of course, but they did need "shelter from the environment" and their environment included marauding tribes like the Apache (Pritzker, pp. 4-5).
The Southwestern tribes' cultural ritual of trading wives, dancers, a shaman or a ritualist (one who channels the power of the dead) was an early Native American example of Maslow's "social needs" concept. Love, belonging, affection, friendships, and romantic attachments are among the social needs Maslow talked about and psychologically the Southwestern tribes had their own psychological approaches to meeting those needs.
Meanwhile Brendan January's book Native American Art & Culture portrays the young Native American as having to go through "an important ritual" in order to become an adult. The adolescent learned how to survive alone in the hills by watching his father and...
The adolescent boy learned how to pray to a spirit "for a vision that would become his guardian" and assistant for all of his life. It might be an eagle, or a bear, or even thunder. Watching older men carrying out this ritual fits in with Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory. People learn through observation of a live model that acts out a behavior, according to About.com. Bandura also theorized that "mental states" are very key to learning, and his elders guided the young Indian as he embraced the link between the "natural and supernatural worlds" (Pritzker, p. 5).
Works Cited
Bandura, Albert. (2008). Social Learning Theory. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/sociallearning.htm.
January, Brendan. (2005). Native American Art & Culture. Chicago: Raintree Publishers.
Maslow, Abraham. (2007). Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved March 30, 2010, from http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm?p=1.
Pritzker, Barry M. (2000). A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples.
New York: Oxford University Press.
