Conclusion
- Deathways in the United States are varied and complex. They reflect different cultural heritages and understandings of the world. This outline considers how mainstream contemporary Americans, those with “green” leanings, and Native American groups such as the Blackfeet, have different relations to and conceptions of death and corpses, which can be seen to reflect their relations to and conceptions of nature.
- Mainstream Americans rely heavily on technological mediation and credentialed experts in corpse disposition. This is informed by a history of application of the logic of science, and engagement with the establishment of science, in death practices.
- People who align with the green burial and/or death positivity movement see a need for the development of death practices – perhaps part of a larger, credentialed industry, perhaps not – that are more ecologically oriented.
- The Blackfeet people engage with deathways which are steeped with their cultural understandings and traditions. They engage with and relate to corpses as social beings, with continued spiritual needs, and which will return to the earth to sustain new growth of life.
- This approach to understanding the connections between deathways and human-nature relations might be utilized for cross-cultural examinations, or to examine more closely our own society’s relations to death and nature.
