Capital Punishment

Indigenous American societies used to exercise the death penalty and still do in the remote Amazon. Apart from Aztec and Mayan human sacrifice to deities, putting people to death as punishment was primarily limited to rival warriors taken captive in battle, and for the unwarranted murder of a tribal member by another. Sometimes shamans believed to have cast evil spells were killed by those affected by them.

In this day and age in civilized societies, people convicted of first and second degree homicide ought to have the option or being put to death or spending the rest of their life in prison without the possibility of parole. The reason for this is twofold:

1) Too many people have been convicted of murder based solely on circumstantial evidence just beyond a reasonable doubt as opposed to an absolute doubt. Subsequent DNA evidence or reliable sources coming forth that prove otherwise have resulted in innocent people being released from death row and prison.

2) From a spiritual Indigenous American traditionalist perspective, spending the rest of your life imprisoned is a greater punishment than death, being that most traditional Indigenous American cultures do not believe in Hell or a realm of eternal damnation and punishment for the wicked and unrepentant "sinners" like some biblical Old Testament, Paulist, and Calvinist-oriented Christian sects do, nor do we believe in just one "heaven."

Although most Indigenous Americans believe that each individual possesses an eternal soul with a conscious and awareness that continues after physical death, which realm of existence that soul goes to and for how long depends on the overall life conduct of the individual. Evil souls can spend a long time remaining on the earth plain as a ghost to learn lessons, and then go on to a purgatory-type of realm for further lessons, but not for an eternity.

Indigenous American traditionalists do not fear death or consider it a punishment. For us, it is just a change of bodies and worlds. Therefore, punishment in the form of decades of incarceration is the less desirable of the two.

Most contemporary Indigenous American traditionalists hold the view that wherever capital punishment continues to exist, it should only be for murder beyond an absolute doubt; carried out swiftly and painlessly, and not made into a circus-like audience spectacle or ritual.