Sun Dance Research Articles

Black Elk ‘s Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism. Clyde Holler

American AnthropologistVolume 98, Issue 3 p. 651-653 Black Elk ‘s Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism. Clyde Holler William K. Powers, William K. Powers Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author William K. Powers, William K. Powers Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1996 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00290AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume98, Issue3September 1996Pages 651-653 RelatedInformation

Black Elk's religion: the Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism

Elk was one of the greatest religious thinkers produced by native North America, and the Sun Dance the central religious ritual of his Lakota tradition. Beginning with a review of the recent critical work on Elk by Paul B. Steinmetz, Julian Rice and Michael K. Steltenkamp, Holler reconstructs the history and development of the Lakota Sun Dance, essential background for understanding Elk's thought. His analysis is a comprehsnive study of the dance, which was banned by the government in 1883. Holler shows how Elk adapted the dance to the conditions and circumstances of reservation life, reinterpreting it in terms commensurate with Christianity. His firsthand account of the dance associated with Frank Fools Crow at Three Mile Camp near Kyle, South Dakota, shows how the contemporary Sun Dance reflects Elk's vision. Holler's book offers a philosophical engagement with native North American religion, carried out in close dialogue with anthropology. Readers who were captivated by John G. Neihardt's gripping portrait of Elk in Black Elk Speaks may be surprised to learn that he was a vital and creative leader until his death in 1950, not the broken, despairing old man made famous by Neihardt. Holler establishes that Elk was both a sincere traditionalist and a sincere Christian, seeing the two religious traditions as expressions of the sacred. Students of religion should be stimulated by Holler's interpretation of Elk as a creative thinker, rather than a passive informant on his people's past. Those interested in Native Americans, especially the Lakota, should appreciate his authoritative reconstruction of the Sun Dance, which proposes new understandings of this central Lakota religious ritual. The book also includes a glossary of terms.

Severing the ties that bind: government repression of indigenous religious ceremonies on the prairies

Religious ceremonies were an inseparable part of Aboriginal traditional life, reinforcing social, economic, and political values. However, missionaries and government officials with ethnocentric attitudes of cultural superiority decreed that Native dances and ceremonies were immoral or un-Christian and an impediment to the integration of the Native population into Canadian society. Beginning in 1885, the Department of Indian Affairs implemented a series of amendments to the Canadian Indian Act, designed to eliminate traditional forms of religious expression and customs, such as the Sun Dance, the Midewiwin, the Sweat Lodge, and giveaway ceremonies. However, the amendments were only partially effective. Aboriginal resistance to the laws took many forms; community leaders challenged the legitimacy of the terms and the manner in which the regulations were implemented, and they altered their ceremonies, the times and locations, the practices, in an attempt both to avoid detection and to placate the agents who enforced the law. Katherine Pettipas views the amendments as part of official support for the destruction of indigenous cultural systems. She presents a critical analysis of the administrative policies and considers the effects of government suppression of traditional religious activities on the whole spectrum of Aboriginal life, focussing on the experiences of the Plains Cree from the mid-1880s to 1951, when the regulations pertaining to religious practices were removed from the Act. She shows how the destructive effects of the legislation are still felt in Aboriginal communities today, and offers insight into current issues of Aboriginal spirituality, including access to and use of religious objects held in museum repositories, protection of sacred lands and sites, and the right to indigenous religious practices in prison.

A Lakota Sun Dance and the Problematics of Sociocosmic Reunion

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Lakota Sun Dance and the Problematics of Sociocosmic ReunionBruce LincolnBruce Lincoln Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 34, Number 1Aug., 1994 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463379 Views: 23Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1994 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Neal Spowage Now I'm Digital, Where Is My Ritual?: Exploring Postdigital Performance Objects as Totems for Agency and Ritual, Leonardo Music Journal 30 (Dec 2020): 68–72.https://doi.org/10.1162/lmj_a_01094Simon J. Joseph The Secret Pipe: Protecting the Ptehíŋčala Čhaŋŋúŋpa of the Lakota Sioux, History of Religions 59, no.11 (Aug 2019): 38–67.https://doi.org/10.1086/703522Greg Johnson Off the stage, on the page: on the relationship between advocacy and scholarship, Religion 44, no.22 (Mar 2014): 289–302.https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2014.888027Paul Christopher Johnson Secretism and the Apotheosis of Duvalier, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74, no.22 (Apr 2006): 420–445.https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj088Greg Johnson Narrative Remains: Articulating Indian Identities in the Repatriation Context, Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no.33 (Aug 2005): 480–506.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417505000228Greg Johnson Tradition, Authority and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Religion 32, no.44 (Oct 2002): 355–381.https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.2002.0426S. E. Wilmer Theatre, Society and the Nation, 6 (Sep 2009).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486142

Teton Sioux Music and Culture

Frances Densmore's modestly titled Teton Sioux Music and Culture is one of the many volumes that resulted from her prolific life-long project to record and transcribe the traditional music of American Indian peoples. book explores the role of music in all aspects of Sioux life, and is a classic of the descriptive genre produced by members of the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. Music serves as the vehicle for organizing this detailed account of traditional religion, warfare, and social life, enriched by first-person narrations by the Lakota men and women who worked with Densmore from 1911 to l914 to preserve their songs by means of a wax cylinder recorder, the modern technology of that period. evident quality of the narratives (translations from Lakota) as well as the complete transcription and translation of all the Lakota lyrics to the songs, resulted from Densmore's close collaboration with Robert P. Higheagle, who shared her dedication to the project and was an exceptionally capable translator and cultural mediator. material recorded here on such topics as dreams and visions, healing, the Sun Dance, and buffalo hunting - all with appropriate musical transcriptions and song lyrics - makes Teton Sioux Music and Culture one of the most significant ethnographic works ever published on the Sioux, as well as an important land-mark in the study of ethnomusicology. - Raymond J. DeMallie, author of The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984), also available as a Bison Book.

Eroticism, violence, and sacrifice: A postmodern theory of religion and ritual

AbstractA fascinating and controversial theory of religion and ritual is offered by Georges Bataille, an influential French postmodern thinker and writer In his collected works he suggests that religion, which he identifies with the sacred, can best be understood by the interconnections and workings of eroticism, violence, and sacrifice. The key to understanding Bataille's theory is to focus on his concept of eroticism, which was one of his life-long obsessions. According to Bataille, a common feature of eroticism, sacrifice, and religion is violence which represents a danger to overflow at anytime. If eroticism opens the way to death, sacrifice effects it. Unable to reject violence, Bataille maintained that human beings practice both internal and external forms of violence in sacrifice. And because the love object of a sexual encounter and the victim of a sacrifice are stripped of their identity in these respective activities, there is an intimate connection between eroticism and sacrifice. Due to the fact that Bataille does not use ample examples from various religions to support his theory, this paper tests his ideas by applying them to the Sun Dance of the Sioux. This dramatic form of sacrifice enables one to recognize the many deficiencies of Bataille's theory.

From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crow Indians’ Own Stories by Joseph Medicine Crow

94 WesternAmerican Literature From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crow Indians’ Own Stories. ByJoseph Medicine Crow. (NewYork: Orion Books, 1992. 160 pages, $17.00.) This collection of history, culture, and folklore is a welcome addition to treatments of an important tribe that has played a major role in the interior West’s past and present. In part, its usefulness is related to the author’s back­ ground and perspective. Agrandson oftwoAbsarokee leaders, Medicine Crow and Yellowtail,Joseph Medicine Crow completed an M. A. in anthropology at the UniversityofSouthern California before armyservice in World War II, and for most of his eighty years has been deeply involved in Montana tribal life as historian, storyteller, and scholar. From the Heart of the Crow Country contains varied material reflecting the author’s compilation and interpretation of tribal knowledge from predomi­ nately oral sources, including numerous elder informants. The book initially presents an overviewofCrowhistoryand culture, including their legendaryand historical migration from the Great Lakes area into North Dakota and Alberta, travel over much of the inner West, and settlement in what is now Northern Wyoming and Southern Montana. The author then discusses the lives and characters of several important leaders such as PlaysWith His Face, Sits in the Middle ofthe Land, and Tom Yellowtail, a chiefin the Sun Dance ceremonial­ ism. An intriguing section concernswarfare in the Crowwayoflife—fightswith the Gros Ventres, Cheyennes, and Arapahos, and the continual conflicts with the Sioux in which the Crows allied themselves with the white man. Stories of war parties and battlesvividlyilluminate the nature and meaning ofwarfor the Plains Indians. The lastpartofthe book discussesvisionquests, “buffalojumps” as a means of procuring meat, the significance of horses in Crow culture, the powers of “medicine men,” and concludes with a perceptive, entertaining chapter on tribal humor. Although From theHeart ofthe CrowCountryfalls more into the category of historyand cultural interpretation than literature, storytelling and oral material are central to the author’s approach. Joseph Medicine Crow has collected interesting facets of traditional Crow life that might otherwise be lost and are also helpful in understanding works such as Plenty-Coupsand Pretty Shield-two biographical accounts “told to”Frank Linderman-and Plains Indian literature in general. The book includes photos, drawings, and a map. ROBERT RORIPAUGH University ofWyoming ...

The Symbolic Role of Animals in the Plains Indian Sun Dance

AbstractFor many tribes of Plains Indians whose bison-hunting culture flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries, the sun dance was the major communal religious ceremony. Generally held in late spring or early summer, the rite celebrates renewal-the spiritual rebirth of participants and their relatives as well as the regeneration of the living earth with all its components. The sun dance reflects relationships with nature that are characteristic of the Plains ethos, and includes symbolic representations of various animal species, particularly the eagle and the buffalo, that once played vital roles in the lives of the people and are still endowed with sacredness and special powers. The ritual, involving sacrifice and supplication to insure harmony between all living beings, continues to be practiced by many contemporary native Americans.

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

The Comanches as Aboriginal Skeptics

vention, syncretism, multiple religious participation) and the role of individualistic ritual are overshadowed. Much of the qualitative dimension-the uniqueness of the constellation of meanings assembled by particular culture groups-is lost. Ultimately, those tribes that fall outside the pale of big ritual trait distribution are liable to be assigned a secondary status as atypical or In light of the prevailing documentation of their religious behavior (Wallace and Hoebel 1952), and by the usual criteria for Plains religion, the Comanches might indeed appear to be marginal. They had little of the Sun Dance or Ghost Dance, there were only traces of medicine societies among them, no tribal fetishes, and their mythic corpus seemed a patchwork in comparison with the myth cycles of other tribes. For revelations they practiced the Plains-style vision quest, but also relied on unsought dreams as the western tribes did. Though

Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography.

Journal Article Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography. By Thomas Yellowtail as told to Michael Oren Fitzgerald. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. xxviii + 241 pp. $21.95.) Get access Yellowtail: Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography. By Yellowtail Thomas as told to Michael Oren Fitzgerald. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. xxviii + 241 pp. $21.95.) Arnold Krupat Arnold Krupat Sarah Lawrence College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 1, June 1992, Pages 348–349, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078627 Published: 01 June 1992

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

Journal Article Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography Get access Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography. By Fitzgerald Michael Oren. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. xxvii + 241 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $21.95.) Ingrid H. Shafer Ingrid H. Shafer University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 23, Issue 2, May 1992, Pages 243–244, https://doi.org/10.2307/970464 Published: 01 May 1992

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

Yellowtail, Crow medicine man and Sun Dance chief: an autobiography

Yellowtail, Crow medicine man and Sun Dance chief: an autobiography

Planting Medium Effects on Forced Swaziland- and Dutch-grown Hippeastrum Hybrids

The Swaziland-grown Hippeastrum bulbs `Summertime' and `Sun Dance' reached the market and flowering stages of development in fewer days than the Dutch-grown bulbs `Apple Blossom' and `Red Lion'. `Sun Dance' was the quickest flower and `Red Lion' the slowest. The effects of the planting medium on days to market and flowering were variable and no medium appeared to be the best for this criterion. `Summertime' and `Red Lion' produced longer leaves at flowering than `Apple Blossom' and `Sun Dance'. Three media that led to the production of the longest leaves, a desirable trait, were: Sunshine no. 4, Fafard 3-B, and Sunshine Post-Harvest. `Apple Blossom' was the tallest cultivar followed by `Sun Dance', `Red Lion', and `Summertime'. Effects of the planting medium on total plant height were variable. The overall plant quality ratings for use as potted plants ranged from 3.4 to 3.8 out of 4 for `Summertime', `Sun Dance', and `Red Lion'. `Apple Blossom' was rated 3.0 because it was tall and had short leaves. It would be suitable as a cut flower. Regardless of the planting medium used, `Apple Blossom' lost the greatest amount of old basal roots. Consequently, it produced many new basal roots. The planting medium had variable effects on old and new basal roots and secondary root growth, depending on the cultivar. Based on all the flowering criteria and the rooting responses, the best media for all cultivars as potted plants were Fafard 3-B and Sunshine Mix no. 4. Fafard no. 2 was best for cut-flower usage since it produced taller plants with a good root system.

The First Amendment, Anglo-Conformity and American Indian Religious Freedom

National public policy to insure freedom of religious belief and practice for American Indians in the United States has been very difficult to establish. When the federal reservation system was established in the 19th century Christian missionaries with federal sanction were established on nearly every reservation. Native religion and religious practices were rigorously persecuted by the missionary groups with the active intervention of the Indian Service, through its employees, especially in the U.S. Indian police. The Indian Service as a federal agency had the power to request the army to intervene with military force when a reservation superintendent thought it necessary. The ideology of the organizations and individuals who have sought federal and state legislation and sanctions against indigenous religions could be classified under the broad category of the doctrine of Anglo-conformity. The term has the central assumptions of the desirability of maintaining Anglo-American institutions, the primacy of the English language, Anglo-American cultural patterns, Protestant Christian religious supremacy as dominant and standard in the United States, along with unquestioned white supremacy.1 When the more spectacular religious observances, such as the Sun Dance, were suppressed in the 1880s, less visible religions remained. T1wo of these were the peyote religion in the Plains and the religion of the Indian pueblos of the Southwest. The intent of the campaigns against the peyote religion and the religion of the Pueblos was to move around the First Amendment dictate that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The campaign organizers decided to use a national public policy approach which for public beneficial secular reasons would (1) control a dangerous drug, peyote; and (2) prevent vicious sexual practices. The objective of controlling these religions then was disguised as being necessary for compelling national secular interests, not prejudicial denial of religious freedom.

The Medicine Men: Oglala Sioux Ceremony and Healing

For the residents of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, mainstream medical care is often supplemented or replaced by a host of traditional practices: the Sun Dance, the yuwipi sing, the heyok'a ceremony, herbalism, the Sioux Religion, the peyotism of the Native American Church, and other medicines, or sources of healing. Thomas H. Lewis, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, describes those practices as he encountered them in the late 1960s and early 1970s.During many months he studied with leading practitioners. He describes the healers--their techniques, personal histories and qualities, the problems addressed and results obtained--and examines past as well as present practices. The result is an engrossing account that may profoundly affect the way readers view the dynamics of therapy for mind and body.

Words for the Sun Dance: Pete Catches, 1969

In 1896 an unidentified Oglala holy man told James R. Walker that Sun is the greatest ceremony that the Oglalas do. It is a sacred ceremony in which all the people have a part (Walker, Belief and Ritual 181). It is significant that the holy man spoke in the present tense, since the (Teton Sioux) Sun had been declared illegal by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1883. Neither the declaration by the Department of the Interior in 1904 banning the ceremony (Mails, Sundancing 3), nor the repeal of the ban by the Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed by Congress in 1978 (Mails, Fools Crow 266), had much impact on the ceremony's actual practice (see Amiotte, Lakota Sun Dance 75 and Mails, Fools Crow 43). It flourished in secret performances through the decades until the unopposed but still illegal ceremony directed by Frank Fools Crow in 1952 (see Mails, Fools Crow 119). The number of participants has grown over the last 40 years, culminating in the presence of approximately 200 dancers in the mystery circle of Fools Crow at Kyle, South Dakota during the 1980s. Fools Crow is the most well known of twentieth century Sun intercessors, although the Sicangu (Brule) spiritual leader, Bill Schweigman, was perhaps just as instrumental in the open restoration of the ceremony (Mails, Sundancing 45-47). Both men are now deceased. The somewhat younger Pete Catches, who danced in Sun Dances conducted by both Fools Crow and Schweigman, has since emerged as the foremost living spiritual leader among the Oglala and perhaps among the generally. Like Fools Crow, Catches is renowned for his eloquence in Lakota. Although he is sophisticated and adept when speaking of spiritual matters in English, the Sun is so sacred that Catches restricts its verbalizing to the language of its visionary origin. His 1969 language response to an interviewer's request to explain ritual details does not attempt to be inclusive or definitive in the manner of ethnographic testimony. The Sun has an abundance of complex

The Sun Came Down by Percy Bullchild

382 T17estern American Literature The Sun Came Down. By Percy Bullchild. (New York: Harper and Row, 1985. 390 pages, $22.95.) Percy Bullchild is a seventy-year-old Blackfoot Indian from Browning Montana. The Sun Ca'me Down, subtitled "The History of the World ~~ My Blackfeet Elders Told It," is an authentic retelling of tribal myths, legends, and beliefs preserved in older oral traditions. Although Bullchild comments that "the whiteman language is still very foreign to me," his storytelling is rich and leisurely, reflecting spoken narration in diction and form. The book is divided into four sections-"Earth's Beginnings," "Napi Tales," "Kut-toe-yis, Bloodclot Tales," and "Honoring Creator Sun." The earliest stories deal with Sun's creation of the world, including Moon, his wife, seven sons who form the Big Dipper, and another wife, -Mother Earth, whom he enhances with grass, water, landforms, and human and animal life. In the second section, Napi (Oldman) is put on earth to teach Creator Sun's ways, though Napi abuses his powers and undergoes various misadventures. To correct Napi's wrongdoings, Kut-toe-yis (Bloodclot ) is sent to remove sources of wickedness. The final section extends the theme of renewal of human faith-through ceremonialism-and the legends foc\ls on the Starman's wife and the Ancient Pipe Bundle, Beaverman and the Preserving Pelts Pipe Bundle, Scarface and origins of the Honor Lodge for Creator Sun (or Sun Dance) . . Whether or not one fully agrees with Percy Bullchild's view that nonIndians have seriously distorted native history and legend, one must acknowledge that he has produced from his people's viewpoint a work of unique interest. The spiritual view of the Piegans' world, the legendary basis for attitudes and ceremonialism, the touches of humor, tragedy, morality, and universal humanity--all are present in the flow of characters, events, and elements of the natural world found in these linked narratives. The book provides both pleasure and deeper understanding of a powerful Northern Plains culture after "The sun came down and abided with his children...." ROBERT A. RORIPAUGI-I University ot Wyoming Southwestern Fiction 1960-1980: A Classified Bibliography. By Mary Lee Morris. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. 101 pages, $9.95 paper.) In this bibliography Mary Lee Morris, a librarian at Golden Library, Eastern New Mexico University, lists and classifies 501 novels by time and geographical setting, genre, and theme. The genre categories are satire, comedy , adventure, intrigue, mystery, political, romance, juvenile, historical, short story, and biographical; and the themes are cowboys, Indians, Wild West, ...

The Canadian Sioux

Canadian are descendants of Santees, Yanktonais, and Tetons from the United States who sought refuge in Canada during the 1860s and 1870s. Living today on eight reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, they have been largely neglected by anthropologists and historians and are the least well-known of all the groups. This study, by a long-time student of and other Indian cultures, fills that gap in the literature. Based on fieldwork done in the 1970s supplemented by written sources, The Canadian Sioux presents a descriptive reconstruction of their traditional culture, many aspects of which are still practiced or remembered by Canadian today although long forgotten by their relatives in the United States. It is rich in detail and presents an abundance of new information on topics such as tribal divisions, documented history and traditional history, warfare, their economy, social life, philosophy and religion, and ceremonialism. Nearly half the book is devoted to Canadian religion and describes such ceremonies as the vision quest, medicine feast, medicine dance, sun dance, warrior society dances, and the Ghost Dance. A welcome addition to American-Indian ethnography, James H. Howard's study provides a valuable overview of Canadian culture and a fine introduction to these little-known groups. late James H. Howard was a professor of anthropology at Oklahoma State University at the time of his death in 1982. His many publications include The Warrior Who Killed Custer: Personal Narrative of Chief Joseph White Bull (1968, also published by the University of Nebraska Press) and Shawnee: Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and Its Cultural Background (1981).