"The identification of places of particular spiritual power points to yet another important aspect of Indian religious traditions: these places are experienced as powerful because they are experienced as alive. Not only are they sentient; they are intelligent manifestations of what Native Americans call the Sacred Mystery or the Sacred Power. The Sacred Mystery, sometimes simplistically and badly translated as "the Great Spirit," is typically experienced first of all as a great unknown. Yet this unknown becomes known as it manifests itself to humans spatially: as the Mystery Above and Mystery Below; as the Mystery (or Powers) of the Four Directions; as the Sacred Mystery in its self-manifestation in a particular place, in a particular occurrence, in an astronomical constellation, or in an artifact such as a feather. All of the created world is, in turn, seen as alive, sentient, and filled with spiritual power, including each human being. The sense of the interrelationship of all of creation--of all two-legged, four-legged, winged, and other living, moving things (from fish and rivers to rocks, trees and mountains)--may be the most important contribution Indian peoples have made to the science and spirituality of the modern world." - George E. Tinker (Osage Nation) Professor of American Indian Cultures at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, from the Encyclopedia of North American Indians