A cautious starting point
Books, articles and websites often claim to explain “the Apache worldview.” It is worth being careful with such claims. The Apache nations are separate peoples, each with its own language, history and teachings, and individual Apache people hold a range of beliefs, including different forms of Christianity, traditional practice, or both. No outsider can state a single Apache philosophy. What follows describes themes that scholars and Apache writers have mentioned publicly, mainly the ideas of balance and respect, and it is not a statement from any nation.
Some knowledge, especially ceremonial and spiritual knowledge, is not shared with the public. This article does not describe it, and a general writer who claims to reveal such things should be treated with suspicion.
What “balance” can mean
In English-language writing, “balance” is a word often used for a set of ideas about living well: acting with care toward other people, the land, animals and plants, and recognizing that actions have consequences. It is a loose term, not a technical one, and it should not be read as a formal doctrine. Different communities express related thoughts in their own languages and ways, and translations can shift the meaning.
Several themes are often listed among core Apache values, though no list is complete or agreed. One is that people are part of a wider world and have obligations within it, including to relatives, to neighbors and to the land. Another is that carefulness, restraint and respect, especially toward elders and toward things considered powerful, are part of good conduct. A third is that harm to people or places can have effects beyond the immediate event, which is one reason that some places and subjects are treated with caution. These are broad descriptions drawn from published work and are not a rule list.
Respect in practice
Respect is described in everyday terms as well as in religious ones. It appears in how younger people are taught to treat elders, in the expectation of listening before speaking, in generosity toward relatives, and in the care taken in gathering plants or hunting. Such expectations of conduct are sometimes summarized as a code of conduct, though that phrase can suggest a written law that does not match how teaching usually took place. Moral instruction in many Native communities is passed on through example, family guidance and stories, a pattern often called teaching through stories, rather than through formal lists of rules.
Stories also tie lessons to places. Western Apache accounts documented by researchers show how a place and a story can be linked, so that the landscape itself reminds people of right conduct. The deeper meanings of such stories belong to the communities that tell them.
Beliefs about the world
Published scholarship notes that many Apache traditions treat animals, plants, mountains and weather as part of a living and meaningful world, with which people have relationships. In some accounts, certain beings and forces are regarded as powerful, and people are cautious about how they approach them. A general description along these lines is about as far as a public overview can responsibly go. Specific beliefs differ among the Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache, and among families. Some communities tell Apache creation stories that feature figures such as Changing Woman, a name that appears in public writing about several Southern Athabaskan peoples, but how those stories are told and understood differs, and details are for the tellers and their communities.
Prayer and religious practice may form part of daily life for some people and be reserved for specific occasions for others. For many Apache people today, traditional practice and Christianity are both part of their lives, sometimes separately and sometimes together.
Watching for stereotypes
There is a long habit in popular writing of reducing Native peoples to a single “spiritual” or “nature-loving” image. This can be flattering in tone but is still a stereotype, because it makes real people into symbols and ignores their diversity, humor, politics and disagreements. Apache people run governments, businesses, schools and ranches, and they argue and plan like anyone else. Another problem is the blending of different nations’ practices into a generic “Native American” worldview, a mistake sometimes described as pan-Indian stereotypes about Apache and others. Plains-style items such as feather headdresses and vision quests are often attributed to Apache people on the basis of film or souvenir culture, when practice varied and may have been quite different.
How to learn more
The most reliable way to learn what Apache people say about their own values is to read what they have written and what their nations publish: books and essays by Apache authors, tribal cultural center materials, and language and culture classes offered by the nations. Older ethnographies are useful but were written by outsiders in particular times, with limits. Reading several kinds of source, and noticing where they disagree, gives a better sense of the subject than any single summary.