The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced differently by several North American Indian Nations, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing and drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and, in some cases, self-torture.
The Sun Dance was the most spectacular and important religious ceremony of the Plains Indians of 19th-century North America, ordinarily held by each tribe once a year usually at the time of the Summer Solstice.
The Sun Dance lasted from four to eight days starting at the sunset of the final day of preparation and ending at sunset. It showed a continuity between life and death - a regeneration. It shows that there is no true end to life, but a cycle of symbolic and true deaths and rebirths. All of nature is intertwined and dependent on one another. This gives an equal ground to everything on the Earth.
The Native American tribes who practiced sun dance were: the Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes. Their rituals varied from tribe to tribe.
For 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 - 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 ritual, involving sacrifice and supplication to insure harmony between all living beings, continues to be practiced by many contemporary native Americans.
The most renowned priest was also the best Lodge maker. He ran the entire ceremony and would instruct the participant in building a preparatory tepee and give direction to the other tribesmen who would gather the items needed for the construction. Men known for their eminence in their tribe were chosen to look for a tree with a fork in the top. This was to be for the first and center pole of the lodge. When a suitable tree was located a special qualified person was called in to cut the tree down. The fallen tree was then treated just like a fallen enemy. Then, depending on the tribe a bundle was placed on the fork. In the Sioux tribe the bundle contained brush, buffalo hide, long straws with tobacco in them and other religious offerings.
The eldest woman of the camp leads a group of elaborately dressed maidens to the tree to strip off its branches. The next morning, right as the sun is seen over the eastern horizon, armed warriors charge the sun-pole. They attack the tree in effort to symbolically kill it with gunshots and arrows. Once it is dead it is cut down and taken to where the Sun Dance Lodge will be erected. Before raising the sun-pole, a fresh buffalo head with a broad center strip of the back of the hide and tail (is) fastened with strong throngs to the top crotch of the sun-pole. Then the pole is raised and set firmly in the ground, with the buffalo head facing toward the setting-sun." The tree represents the center of the world, connecting the heavens to the earth.
The lodge is then built by the main dancer and his clansmen. The fork of the lodge represents the eagle's nest. The eagle plays a large part in the Sun Dance for it is one of the Plains Indians' most sacred animal. The eagle flies high, being the closest creature to the Sun. Therefore it is the link between man and spirit, being the messenger that delivers prayers to the Wakan-Tanka (god).
In addition to being a messenger, the eagle also represents many human traits. We can see what values and traits these cultures saw as being important in a person by those traits imposed upon such a sacred animal. The eagle is seen as courageous, swift, and strong. He has great foresight and knows everything. "In an eagle there is all the wisdom of the world."
During the Sun Dance the eagle is the facilitator of communication between man and spirit. The Crow may be accompanied by a dancing eagle in his visions, the eagle instructing him about the medicine acquired through the vision. The eagle's feathers can cure illnesses. During the Sun Dance a medicine man may use his eagle feather for healing, first touching the feather to the sun-pole then to the patient, transferring the energy from the pole to the ill people.
It is the buffalo, however, that makes up the main theme of the Sun Dance. In various stories it was the buffalo that began the ritual. The Shoshone believe that the buffalo taught someone the proper way to carry out the dance and the benefits in doing it. Buffalo songs, dances, and feast commonly accompany the Sun Dance.
You can see from the symbolic influences of the buffalo in the Sun Dance how important the animal was to Plains Indians' day-to-day life. It was the buffalo that symbolized life for it was the buffalo that gave them quality of life. Plains Indians relied on buffalo for their food, clothing, shelter, and most all utensils from fly swatters to children's toys. These peoples' lives were intertwined with the buffalo's. And this relationship was praised and blessed with the Sun Dance.
The buffalo was incorporated in many ways in the Sun Dance. The Cheyenne held a principle that all essential sacred items in the sun dance (be) related to the buffalo. The Lakota would place a dried buffalo penis against the sun-pole to give virility to the dancers. This reinforces the symbolic meaning of the ceremony as a celebration of the generative power of the sun.
The sun dance was a significant part of the Crow Indian people's spirituality. It was a spiritual retreat in which a large number of participants would fast, pray and dance for a period of days. They asked for answers to events going on in their lives.
The buffalo skull is used as an alter during the Sun Dance. Offerings are presented to the skull, the Cheyenne stuffing the eye and nose sockets with grass, representing bountiful vegetation for the buffalo, which in turn meant healthy buffalo for the people. For others the grass represents bringing the buffalo back to life for grass is what gives the animal life. The Dakota believe that the bones of bison they have killed will rise again with new flesh. The soul was seen to reside in the bones of people and animals, to reduce a living being to a skeleton is equivalent to re- entering the womb of this primordial life - a mystical rebirth.
During the dance the buffalo also has a great role in the visions. The buffalo may knock down a dancer, or the dancer may challenge the buffalo by charging at it. Passing out for too long means one was too afraid to face the buffalo. One must show courage and stand up to the buffalo before the buffalo finds him worthy to give him what he desires. At a certain point the Crow will notice he is seeing through the buffalo's eyes, that he has become one with the buffalo.
The Sun Dance symbolizes a resolution with the conflict between being a people that view the buffalo as wise and powerful, even closer to the creator than humans, and having to kill and eat them to survive. Making the buffalo sacred, symbolically giving new life to it, and treating it with respect and reverence acts a s a sort of reconciliation. Without the buffalo there would be death, and the Plains Indians saw that the buffalo not only provided them with physical well-being, but kept their souls alive, too.
They also believed that the buffaloes gave themselves to them for food, so the natural course to them would be to offer a part of themselves in return out of gratitude. Thus the sacrifice of the dancers through fasting, thirst, and self-inflicted pain reflects the desire to return something of themselves to nature.
Self-inflicted torture has also come to symbolize rebirth. The torture represents death, then the person is symbolically resurrected. The sun dancer is reborn, mentally and spiritually as well as physically,along with the renewal of the buffalo and the entire universe.
In an effort to curb such practices, the United States government outlawed the Sun Dance in 1904. Among a number of tribes benign forms of the ceremony continued, usually as part of Fourth of July celebrations. There were a few tribes, however, that have attempted to revive the Sun Dance in its original form and meaning.
After the dancers all tear free, or after four days, the Sun Dance ends. The dancers are laid down on beds of sage to continue fasting and to recite their visions to the priest. These visions may hold new songs, new dance steps, or even prophecies of the future. Whatever the outcome, the overall feeling for everyone present is of renewal and balance, the relationships between people and nature once again reaffirmed.
When the camp is ready to leave all sacred items are left in a pile by the sun-pole for they are too sacred to keep for personal use. The Sun Dance Lodge is then left standing for nature to do with it as it wills.
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LOVE AND BLESSINGS
LIGHTWINDS
wENDY XX
I don't usually get this deep, but I prayed about it, and I felt that it would serve a good purpose.
When I was making preparations to fufill my personal Sundance commitment some years ago, I was taught some of the very early meanings beind the origins to the Lakota Sundance. While it would not be appropriate to talk in any detail about my experience while Sundancing or what takes place during a modern Sundance, as I said, have prayed about this and I feel it would be okay to mention briefly what some of the early meanings were.
It has been said that in the very early buffalo days, before contact with any whitemen, the Sundance was performed to call the Thunderbeings to bring rains, which in turn would provide new grass on the prairie and attract more buffalo.
To attract a Thunderbeing, thought to be in the abstract form of a bird, to an area in which a camp was located, so that it could "rest" in that territory for a time, a "nest" would be provided in the form of the bundle of chokecherry branches in the fork of the cottonwood Sundance pole. The male only sundancers would then dress in a manner to represent baby Thunderbirds, which like eagles at birth are naked or without primary feathers. The sundancers would also blow on the eagle bone whistles to imitate the constant chirping of the nestlings and lure a Thunderbird to come. The fact that the sundancers were fasting was also connected to the arrival of the Thunderbird, as they were said to be waiting for the "mother" Thunderbird to feed or nourish them.
Since it was said that in the very old days the sundancers were just men and they danced completely naked, the dance arbor was closed on the sides by weaving branches in-between the uprights. This created a private enclosure with an open top. It was only later that the dance evolved to a public ceremony with open sides, spectators, and male sundancers wearing a simple cloth wrapped around their waist, and women, now included, wearing plain dresses.
This is a very old explanation, and is rarely passed on these days as some would say that it has no relevance to today's Sundance, as the reasons for today's form of Sundance have evolved and changed over the years.
However, I believe the evolution of traditions can be a good thing. A tradition is only as good as the function and purpose it serves. Once a tradition no longer has a purpose, it then becomes a meaningless habit.
People change and conditions change, so traditions should change enough to accomodate the new conditions, yet still retain their value. This is why we now use blankets instead of buffalo robes to cover a sweatlodge, or why a pipe is lit with a wooden match instead of a glowing buffalo chip taken from a fire, or why tobacco prayer ties are wrapped up in colored cloth instead of pieces of buffalo intestine.
Do people who attend a Sundance know the old meaning behind it? I would guess that very few know the older meanings. In fact, there are some who do not fully understand the modern meanings, symbolisms, and reasons for doing certain things, such as the purpose for having 28 support poles around the sundance arbor. Many do not know that this ties together the symbolic representation of the universe, as the moon is in cycles of 28 days, a woman's menstration cycle is 28 days, there are 28 ribs in a buffalo, there are 28 eagle feathers in a war bonnet or feathered headdress, and some people, myself included, use 28 rocks in a sweatlodge ceremony of purification.
Some people are not interested in the detailed background of meanings, and history of tradition, and would rather blaze forward with only bits and pieces. I even see this on the Pow-Wow circuit today. A certain percentage of young dancers are looking for a set of dance clothes they can buy, already made, without learning how to do the crafts. They do not have the time or patience to make a pair of fully beaded moccasins from scratch. They are more motivated to go for the cash the dance contest winnings provide, without fully understanding the songs they are dancing to, or why they were composed. This is an example of evolution of traditions gone bad, in my opinion. There has to be a balance of adapting to new conditions, while preserving traditional values, knowledge and culture.
A Lakota Sundancer, as I was taught anyway, pledges to dance for many things, including his prayers for others.
However, in addition to prayers, he also dances to strengthen his niya, his nagi, and his nagila. The niya is a person's life breath, and their innermost self. The nagi some would call a spiritual form of ourselves that retains something of a person's personality after his death. The nagila, or what some have called the "little ghost" is that part of a person that is in all things. It is the power that makes all things move.
The Sundancer also seeks to strengthen his sicun, or the sacred power that can be realized by proper interaction with the sacred powers, or what some call the supernatural. Therefore, one of the purposes of the Sundance rarely talked about, or often mis-understood, is that it is to nurture and strengthen the dancer, so that he may be of greater help to his family and community.
When the Sundancer's flesh is cut and the ropes are attached, in a spiritual sense, the Sundancer's four parts (niya, nagi, nagila and sicun) are being joined to the sacred power manifest within the sun. The sacred tree becomes the navel of the Universe, and all the forces of the Universe are centered there, and flow through the tree.
When the Sundancer is "hooked up" to the tree, (through his sacrifice, through his being made sacred, through being transformed), he is plugged into, or attached to, that which is sacred. However, it is dangerous for a person to stay in the sacred world for too long, as it is said that a person might find it so wonderful in that state, that they would want to stay there indefinately. So, I have been taught that Sundancers should make every effort to free themselves from the tree as soon as they have finished with their most sincere prayers, how ever long that takes. This pulling away from the tree, and thereby tearing the flesh, is what has been mis-understood as self-torture. But I understand it to be a kind of sacred ecstasy when the Sundancer realizes the wholeness and unity of all things, and quickly frees himself. This is another personal sacrifice the Sundancer makes. To leave the sacred world and go back to temporal reality, and bring that new strength and new understanding with him, for the betterment of all the people.
Lastly, I will say that the Sundance is a very potent means for a Sundancer to express humility and dependence on the wakanpi, or "sacred-beings", and in a sense, the Sundance has elements that portray ritual death, experiencing a vision after communicating with Wakan Tanka, and a ritual re-birth.
Maka kin ecela tehan yunke.
("Only the earth lives forever.")
When I was making preparations to fufill my personal Sundance commitment some years ago, I was taught some of the very early meanings beind the origins to the Lakota Sundance. While it would not be appropriate to talk in any detail about my experience while Sundancing or what takes place during a modern Sundance, I have prayed about this and I feel it would be okay to mention briefly what some of the early meanings were.
It has been said that in the very early buffalo days, before contact with any whitemen, the Sundance was performed to call the Thunderbeings to bring rains, which in turn would provide new grass on the prairie and attract more buffalo. More buffalo meant that the people would live another season, with plenty of meat to eat, hides to make robes and tipi coverings, and tools made from buffalo parts.
To attract a Thunderbeing, thought to be in the abstract form of a bird, to an area in which a camp was located, so that it could "rest" in that territory for a time, a "nest" would be provided in the form of the bundle of chokecherry branches in the fork of the cottonwood Sundance pole. The male only sundancers would then dress in a manner to represent baby Thunderbirds, which like eagles at birth are naked or without primary feathers. The sundancers would also blow on the eagle bone whistles to imitate the constant chirping of the nestlings and lure a Thunderbird to come. The fact that the sundancers were fasting was also connected to the arrival of the Thunderbird, as they were said to be waiting for the "mother" Thunderbird to feed or nourish them.
Since it was said that in the very old days the sundancers were just men and they danced completely naked, the dance arbor was closed on the sides by weaving branches in-between the uprights. This created a private enclosure with an open top. It was only later that the dance evolved to a public ceremony with open sides, spectators, and male sundancers wearing a simple cloth wrapped around their waist, and women, now included, wearing plain dresses.
This is a very old explanation, and is rarely passed on these days as some would say that it has no relevance to today's Sundance, as the reasons for today's form of Sundance have evolved and changed over the years.
However, I believe the evolution of traditions can be a good thing. A tradition is only as good as the function and purpose it serves. Once a tradition no longer has a purpose, it then becomes a meaningless habit.
People change and conditions change, so traditions should change enough to accomodate the new conditions, yet still retain their value. This is why we now use blankets instead of buffalo robes to cover a sweatlodge, or why a prayer pipe is lit with a wooden match instead of a glowing buffalo chip taken from a fire, or why tobacco prayer ties are wrapped up in colored cloth instead of pieces of buffalo intestine.
A very interesting read there Historian thankyou.
Time ticks by and traditions change thats true, but those traditions can give a person a sense of belonging, if they choose to embrace them and not turn away, do you think?
Seeds of traditions and ceremony firmly planted by the ancestors, which enables future generations a grounding and firm rootedness in the earth. Allowing their hearts to beat at the rhythm of their own drum and their arms to embrace the stars. 🙂
Knowledge of the roots of any tradition can give you historical perspective and meaning, which enables one to understand the present forms of a tradition and how it relates to cultural norms, values and the needs of the people.