Healing Hills and Sacred Songs: Crow Pentecostalism, Anti-Traditionalism, and Native Religious Identity

Abstract

movement is represented by the largest number of congregations and carries the most significant socio-political influence within the tribal community. Sig- nificantly, the Crow Pentecostal movement has attracted, nurtured, and main- tained more Native pastors, by far, than any other Christian denomination on the reservation. While other denominational missions on the reservation follow the national trend of struggling to develop a Native clergy, it is striking to note that every Pentecostal church on the reservation—nearly twenty of them—is currently served by a Crow pastor. My decision to undertake this study was made one Sunday morning in the summer of 2010. I had just spent the better part of a week camped out in a tent in Pryor Valley, Crow Reservation, to observe the four day ceremony of the Shoshone-Crow Sun Dance in preparation for a university course I would be teaching that fall on Native American religions. More than sixty dancers participated in the ceremony, fasting, dancing, and praying inside the circular, rough-hewn lodge from Thursday evening until Sunday morning, abstaining from food and water throughout the grueling rite. From sunrise until well past sunset each day, under the gaze of an unrelenting sun and with only brief intervals of rest, dancers moved to the rhythm of the beating drum. Over and over, they made their way from the perimeter of the circular lodge to the large cottonwood tree planted at the center of the structure, their intentions and sacrifices charging the sacred pole with spiritual power. On Saturday after- noon, members of the tribal community were invited into the lodge for doc- toring, in which the Sun Dance chief offered prayers of blessing and rituals of healing, using his sacred feather-fan to transfer spiritual medicine from the center pole to each supplicant who came for prayer. The fast was broken on Sunday morning when each dancer took a drink of water from a common cup, at which time they emerged from the lodge to join family and friends for a celebratory feast. 3