Visit the Gabra of Kenya whose relationship to their harsh desert environment is key to their survival; the Makuna of Colombia whose complex myths and rituals reveal a highly sophisticated ecological awareness; and a modern gardener who resists the Western world's control of nature with a new attitude about sowing Earth's garden. Where does individual identity begin and end? Western societies strive to answer these questions through biology - conception, birth, adolescence, maturity, death - while tribal cultures define identity through relationships with others and rites of passage with the living and the dead. Hear stories from the family life of an abortion counselor in Canada; an initiation into manhood for a Xavante boy in Brazil; a high school girl's attempted suicide; and a Weyewa man of Sumba Island, Indonesia who speaks to his dead relatives. Every society has a system of knowledge, a way to describe reality that we call either science or magic - and sometimes both. Who will stop a fatal epidemic sweeping the villages of the Huichol Indians of Mexico - the medical doctor or the shaman? Can a terminal cancer patient in a modern hospital benefit from mindfulness practice in combating her disease? Is there an objective reality "out there" or is it something we can shape as the Australian Aborigines believe? Why do we separate art and living? In tribal societies, where there are no words for "art" or "artist", everyday life is an occasion for creative expression. Follow a Wodaabe woman from Niger as she judges a festival of beauty and grace; a Dogon man from Mali celebrating at a masked funeral dance; and a contemporary artist, diagnosed with HIV, revealing his own unique art of living. People everywhere search for meaning in their lives, a sense of the sacred, a world beyond time. The Huichol Indians of Mexico make an annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta to consume peyote, the sacred food of the gods and, in Arizona, a Navajo medicine man invites the Holy Ones into his hogan through sand painting, chanting and "walking in beauty". Where is the sacred in the modern world? How do tribal societies maintain social order and harmony without the vast legal institutions that we rely on? The tribal practice of democracy through consensus is put to the test when members of Canada's Ojibwa-Cree tribe have a constitutional struggle with the federal government and the Mohawk community squares off against the Canadian army in Oka, Quebec. Cultural survival is rooted both in the recognition of land rights and native language education. Travel to France to explore the most perplexing dilemmas of the Western world - heart versus mind, body versus soul, the desires of the individual versus the needs of society.