Modern American culture seems to have the need for discrepancy between leisure and work more than any other culture in the world. We really forget the possibility that other meanings besides our own might exist. I would like to explore the different meanings that leisure has for people of other cultural backgrounds and compare them with those of European descent. It is important to keep in mind that there is no way of regarding any culture in which the results can be taken as truth about the culture in its entirety. Values and ideals vary from person to person and from community to community. There are, however, commonalties found spread throughout the body of a culture and these can be very meaningful.

The western concept of leisure in most cases contains some notion of the need to get away from pressures, to have time for one's self, in order to do exactly what one would be doing were they not required to work. This is one concept which has not been found in some other cultures. In fact it was quite an offensive idea to the Indo-Canadian women interviewed for the Journal of Leisure research. These women had arrived in Canada in 1903 and made themselves homes here despite difficulty posed by extreme discrimination against Asian immigrants at the time. There were ten women interviewed for this study. Although it provides a strictly female view this research provides valuable insight into the cultural perception of leisure in India. Before conducting their interviews, researchers Susan C. Tirone and Susan M. Shaw sought advice from a professor from the Indo-Canadian community, familiar with qualitative research methods. She explained that using terms like leisure, hobbies and recreation would probably be misunderstood or interpreted differently by these women.

The researchers simply asked the women questions about how they spent their time rather than asking them to differentiate between their leisure and their work. The ten women all expressed discomfort with the Western concept of leisure as a time to escape. Family is the central concept of social behavior in India. All importance for the individual revolves around the family.

We never like to leave our daughter on Saturdays or Sundays. That is something you will probably find common among Indian families. We have a real hang up about taking time off for yourself. We don't at all feel comfortable leaving her because we feel she is left after school at the day care. So we go only to those places where we can take her. (Professor, daughter age 8)

Most of these women also said they would quit their jobs, or their husbands would quit their jobs if it came to the point where their children were spending time alone at home. This attitude towards work as secondary to "leisure" is not so common among Anglo-Americans, or if it is, it is not widely practiced.

Similar results came of Daniel McDonald and Leo McAvoy's study of Native American concepts of leisure as far as the separation of work time and leisure time is concerned.

Native American cultures tend to see leisure as inseparable from a host of other concerns and interests. In one study Malloy et al. (1993) suggests that the marginal economic levels characteristic of many Native American communities would give little meaning to the categorization of recreation as a self-expressive motivated type of free time.

McDonald and McAvoy approached their study with basic aspects of Euro-American leisure concepts and compared these to the aspects of leisure that were expressed to them through their study. Within a study of a Cree community, there were two leisure ideals which were common to that of Euro-American culture. Those were pursuit of freedom and extrinsic motivation. The next two however, are not so commonly found in Euro-American culture and those are: being close to nature and response to an inner drive to be outdoors.(Picken, 1992)

Sports are the most common leisure activity in modern America, whether that means playing them or watching them. Most Native Americans traditionally incorporated sport into their daily lives, but the modern Euro-American approach is much different. The James Bay Cree of Canada was found to play a mix of Native and European games. (Flannery 1937) Tag, hide and seek, high jumping, and snow-snake (sliding a log in the snow for distance) were among the games played both by children and adults. These games however were played much more in the spirit of skill building and bettering the abilities of ones self and of each other than they were for competing to win or humiliate others. This is a very important difference between Euro-American and Native American leisure practices, and was noted in the different studies of most of the tribes discussed in this article.

Throughout America we have put a great deal of effort into the establishment of national parks and wilderness reserves. These are created to preserve pieces of nature within a land of rapid industrialization and also to provide sources of recreation for people. The concept of the wildlife preserve actually provokes a good deal of negativity from many Native Americans. "Native Americans often feel that 'parks are places of humiliation' where they are 'displayed and exploited.'" (Meeker Woods and Lucas, 1973). The Temagami Indians were reportedly used as props in the Ontario Wilderness Park. They would be essentially on display in their own home when people would come through the park in search of 'wilderness, adventure and escape.' The entire concept of wildlife preserve is alien to most Native Americans. For human to draw invisible lines and designate these as barriers between what is wilderness and what is not, and for human to enter into these preserves as a means of procuring enjoyment, these things are offensive. It represents a very demeaning attitude towards nature, implying human superiority and implying that the world is here for us to consume.

There is a current phenomena regarding the way we spend leisure time in the modern western world. It is almost work of a different kind. People tend to be so perplexed about wasting time and about making the most of the time when they don't have to work that they drive themselves to exhaustion in an attempt to make "good use" of their leisure time. This is because of the extent to which we differentiate between the two. The majority of us are completely absorbed in the system of consumerism; We work in order to have money, we have money in order to buy things to amuse ourselves with. We now see leisure as if it were something we must get as much as possible of in the time allotted, and we gain little or no rejuvenation and replenishment from it as a result. There is evidence everywhere of the possibility of a world in which the line between work and leisure is much much thinner and it is becoming a very critical issue and we have a lot to gain by considering the views of other cultures in this matter.