The Winter Dance

The Winter Dance

The winter dance is a ceremony for the renewal of the earth that is performed by the Salish people on the Colville Reservation, north of Spokane, Washington. John Grim, a religious historian, an adopted member of a Crow Indian family, and the author of The Shaman Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians, attends the winter dance each year, and explained the ritual to me. Grim states that the dance for renewal is not an abstract notion. Rather, it is performed to invoke heavy rains so that root crops will grow to provide sustenance for humans, and to keep animals alive for man to hunt.

 

The winter dance is performed for four days, from eight in the evening until nine the next morning. The first day of the winter dance is usually for family. Then intimate friends of the family are invited. It grows from there, and by the fourth day, there may be as many people as s 100 or 150 people in attendance. The location of the ceremony is chosen by a Shaman. It is held in a single room; the windows are covered, and there is a pole made of pine in the middle of the room that extends from the floor to the ceiling. This pole is referred to as the old man, and is a symbol for our relationship with the Spirits that created and gave meaning to this world.

 

During the winter dance itself, Spirits call out in the form of songs. Those who can hear the songs will sing them. This exchange between the Spirits and human beings is called Samish in the Salish language, a word which implies that a special sound is being imparted to a person by the creative presence of the world. No one touches the pine pole except for the singers, who begin to sing very slowly, one at a time. There is no set order regarding who will sing when. The singers are believed to be in trance, although this word doesn’t fully capture the experience of what actually takes place. A translator is usually present to give the English interpretation, or if the words are already in English, to project the message loud and clear for everyone in the room to hear. These are personal statements about ethical and moral life, about community, about Spirit presence, and about the origin of the song. The singer begins to sing at a much faster pace, and people get up to dance.

 

The four day ceremony attractswet heavy snow, then a frost and a cold spell, followed by more snow to get moisture down into the root crops. Grim notes how each time he attends the winter dance, it snows.

Native American Healing

The Naming Ceremony

The Naming Ceremony

Legal names are given, but Native American names are earned. Gabriel Horn gives a personal account of why and how his Indian name was chosen: "By the time I graduated from college, I had already done my battles for the people. I had protested against stereotypes of Native Americans, I had fought for a Native American literature course on campus, and I had asked for participation in the United Nations. My immediate family believed that I had earned a name. The name came to my uncle, a traditional Cherokee man, who had a vision of a white deer coming to him and singing my name. He knew it was to be White Deer.

 

 

"My godmother, my uncle, and some close friends attended the ceremony. A pipe was filled with tobacco, and offered to each direction, as they called out my name. They called it out to the east, the south, the west, and the north. They called it out to the sky and to the earth. They called it out to the plants. They called it out to the animals. In other words, I was introduced to the universe as White Deer. That was my rebirth. In a sense, I was a born again Indian at that point." Receiving a new name was a healing experience. I was now completely comfortable with my Indian identity, whereas before I felt fragmented, not totally in touch with who I was."

 

 

Name changes can be physically as well as psychologically healing. Some time later, White Deer became ill, and a longer name was the solution: "I had gotten very sick, and was near death. A very old Ojibwa medicine man from Canada came down to Minnesota. I believe he was over 100 years old, and he didn’t speak any English. During the ceremony of healing for me, a manifestation appeared in the room. At that point, the medicine man said that the entity wanted me to also be called Autumn. I was now White Deer of Autumn. The ceremony ended, and my sickness was healed.

 

 

"The name, of course, bestows certain powers and responsibilities. The power of the deer is its awareness, its keenness, and its protective nature. The white is purity, purity of heart, mind, and words. Autumn, I was told, is a time when change is most visible. It’s a time when change is at its most powerful. And so, I was named for thatseason."

 

 

Indian names can be passed down, as western names often are. The distinction is that you are not stuck with one name all your life. This represents different beliefs about human potential, says White Deer of Autumn: "Crazy Horse passed on his name to his son, who took the name Worm as he got older. So, we can pass on names, too. The idea is that you’re not stuck with the name you were given at birth. In western society, it’s almost as if you can’t change; you can’t evolve; you can’t grow. From a native perspective, your name reflects who you are. White Deer of Autumn reflects what I’ve done. But as I go on in life, I may want to let go of that and take another name. I have that right. So, naming is the ability to evolve and change in your identity. I think this is healing, both physically and emotionally."

Native American Healing

The Sun Dance

The Sun Dance

The sun dance is the predominant tribal ceremony of Great Plains Indians, although it is practiced by numerous tribes today as a prayer for life, world renewal and thanksgiving.

On a personal level, someone may dance to pray for a relative or friend, or to determine their place in the universe, while on a larger scale, the sun dance serves the tribe and the earth.

Indigenous people believe that unless the sun dance is performed each year, the earth will lose touch with the creative power of the universe, thereby losing its ability to regenerate.

The sun dance was outlawed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, partly because certain tribes inflicted self-torture as part of the ceremony, which settlers found gruesome, and partially as part of a grand attempt to westernize Indians by forbidding them to engage in their ceremonies and speak their language.

Sometimes the dance was performed when reservation agents were lax and chose to look the other way. But as a rule, younger generations were not being introduced to the sun dance and other sacred rituals, and a rich cultural heritage was becoming extinct.

Then, in the 1930's, the sun dance was relearned and practiced once again. Michael Fitzgerald, an adopted member of the Yellow Tail family of the Crow tribe, and author of Yellow Tail Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief related this amazing story to me.

A man by the name of John Trojillo was walking in the mountains while on a vision quest when he was struck by lightning. At that moment, the Spirit of the mountain came to Trojillo and carefully explained to him different healing ceremonies and medicines.

Three days later, Trojillo noticed himself walking through a rock, and then saw himself lying on the floor of the cave. He laid down in his body and awoke, realizing that he had been in his Spirit all this time, not his physical body.

Trojillo was given explicit instructions to follow for a year’s time. He was told to pray, to go on vision quests, and not to practice his medicine power. Afterwards, Trojillo was able to call upon the Spirits of the medicine fathers,whenever someone was in need of help, and was the vehicle for many miraculous healings.

The first healing was especially dramatic, involving a man who had been shot twice, just above the heart. The doctors of this time were not skillful enough to perform such a delicate operation, but Trujillo prayed for the man, and sprinkled the wound with a sacred powder, called lightning root.

The next day, the bullets worked themselves out and were lying beneath the man. The patient fully recovered and lived many more healthy years. While the herbs played a role, Trujillo credited the man’s survival to the Spirits who had responded to his prayers.

Trujillo became prominent in his tribe as a result of this incident and was asked to reinstate the sun dance on the Shoshoni reservation. Then in 1941, he was invited to the Crow reservation to teach the sun dance, which had also been lost due to generations of U.S. government Indian policy.

Since this new version differed from the original dance, the Crows called the ceremony the Crow Shoshoni sun dance.

The tribes learned that the sun dance consisted of various elements. There was the ritual of the sacred pipe, the purification ceremony, monthly prayer ceremonies, and a yearly ritual.

The sun dance chief offers the prayers from the sacred pipe to the four directions, as well as the earth and sky, on a daily basis.

The purification ceremony is performed before the sun dance and again afterwards. Monthly sun dance prayer ceremonies take place 12 times a year, at the time of the full moon.

During this ceremony, two medicine bundles are opened, and ritual objects are taken out and placed on an elk’s skin in the middle of the floor. Heated coals are brought into the lodge, incense is placed on the fire, and special songs are sung to help carry the prayers of the smoke to a subtler world.

At the end of the ceremony, people in the audience come forth to be healed. Animal instruments, such as eagle feathers and otter skins, are used. Fitzgerald notes that a great spiritual leader, Yellow Tail, used a hollowed out horn of a spiked horn elk as his primary method of healing. Blowing on a patient’s back with the horn created a terribly shrill sound, but resulted in many miraculous cures and protection against danger.

In one instance, a prominent American Indian was sent to Viet Nam and shot at close range by the Viet Cong. Although the bullet tore through his tee shirt, it did not penetrate him.

During the healings, the medicine man prays over the patient, touching him or her with the animal instrument. The bad spirits are taken into the prop, and then cast into the wind.

Sometimes herbs are given to the patient to alleviate simple symptoms, but as mentioned earlier, the essential cure is through prayer. The medicine man calls forth spiritual entities to enter the physical world in order to cure the patient.

In addition to the 12 monthly ceremonies, there is a three to four day sun dance that takes place each summer, usually in July. The preparation is too detailed to describe here, but involves building a lodge from a large cottonwood tree, with a forked branch in the middle.

Twelve upright poles are placed about 13 paces from the center pole in a circular fashion, with rafter poles connecting the outside of the circle to the inner pole. From an aerial view, this appears as a wagon wheel with a hub in its center.

This symbolizes the tribe (on the outside of the circle) trying to find their way straight to the center.

Fitzgerald told me about the preparations for the Crow sun dance, where the dancers greet each sunrise with sacred songs. Then the medicine man prays on behalf of the tribe, the world, and all creation.

Throughout the day, 100 or more tribe members may dance to a drum beat, which represents the heart of the universe. The dancers fast for the duration of the ceremony. All their time is spent praying to the Creator and dancing toward and away from the center pole.

The ceremony is brutal and causes many dancers to collapse, what Indians call taking a fall. This is followed by a vision, similar to what happens on a vision quest, only here many people are given guidance for the good of the tribe. In a sense, this is a community vision quest to renew the people and the bioregion.

On the second day, spectators from the tribe enter the lodge to be healed, bearing gifts of tobacco and incense. This is exactly the same process that takes place during the monthly prayer sun dance ceremonies, where harmful spiritual and physical manifestations are taken into an animal instrument and cast off to the wind, while prayers are said to heal the person.

Sun dance ceremonies typically end with a purification ceremony so that tribe members can re-enter the world refreshed and regenerated. Fitzgerald notes that this ritual is as concrete as it is symbolic, and related to me a time when he was in a purification lodge with Yellow Tail.

While praying, Yellow Tail suddenly threw a scoop of water onto the very hot volcanic rocks. The force of the 212 degree steam knocked Fitzgerald down. He equated the feeling to that of an egg that sizzles when dropped onto a skillet.

Yellow Tail continued to pray, and then asked Fitzgerald if he was alright. Fitzgerald leaned up onto his elbow to assure Yellow Tail that he was fine, feeling too embarrassed to admit that he was thrown onto the ground. At that moment, Fitzgerald realized that this was more than a symbolic death; there was an element of pure suffering accompanying this ceremony of death and renewal.

The dual meaning of this ritual is also expressed by Yellow Tail, who says, "When water is thrown onto the rocks, the heat does not merely cleanse us from the outside. It also goes all the way into our hearts.

We know that we must suffer the ordeal of the heat in order to purify ourselves. In that way, we re-emerge from the sweat lodge at the end of the ceremony as new men who have been shown the light of the wisdom of our spiritual heritage for the first time.

This allows us to participate in all of our daily tasks with the fresh remembrance of our position on earth, and our continuous obligation to walk on this earth in accordance with the sacred ways."

From The Site:

Native American Healing

White Deer of Autumn on Spiritual Healing

White Deer of Autumn on Spiritual Healing

"When my wife found out that she had breast cancer, and a doctor, without any sensitivity, told her that she needed to have her breasts cut off, she immediately rejected this approach. She knew it was unnatural for her body to deal with radiation. Instead, my wife went through a process of cleansing through sweat lodges and meditation. She returned her body to a more natural form that brought her closer to the earth, and that healed her spirit, which had been hurt as a child through molestation, boarding school, and racism.

"My wife took chemotherapy at the end, and it did prolong her life for a few months. But she reacted horribly to the chemotherapy. Of course she would. She’s a native woman, a natural woman. Putting something so unnatural into her body is going to cause her to react in that way.

"While taking chemotherapy, my wife continued to attend our ceremonies where she would sit in the center surrounded by loved ones. We would offer the pipe, and use rattles and drums and sing for her, trying to create peace and healing.

"She died just after Mother’s Day. I will never forget how she invited the children onto her bed and asked for the pipe. The last act on this earth that she wanted to do was to smoke the pipe with her children. Even though the cancer destroyed her physical body, the healing of her Spirit allowed my wife to make a remarkable, wondrous transition into the next world."

 

Native American Healing