Native Religions & Cultures of North America: Anthropology of the Sacred

256 Pages·2003·13.42 MB·English

by  Lawrence Sullivan

Native
Religions
and
Cultures
of North
America
From the Series Anthropology of the Sacred
Edited by Julien Ries and Lawrence E. Sullivan
Native
Religions
and
Cultures
of North
America
Anthropology
of the Sacred
Edited by
Lawrence E. Sullivan
Continuum • New York and London
2000
The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
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Copyright © 2000 by The Continuum Publishing Company
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the written permission of The Continuum Publishing Company.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-iri'Publication Data
Native religions and cultures of North America / edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan.
p. cm. - (Anthropology of the sacred)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8264-1084-7
1. Indians of North America - Religion. 2. Indians of North America - Social life
and customs. I. Sullivan, Lawrence Eugene, 1949- II. Series.
E98.R3 N39 2000
99-049012
Contents
Introduction 1
Lawrence Sullivan
1. Renewal as Discourse and Discourse as Renewal 33
in Native Northwestern California
Thomas Buckley
2. Traditional Ways and Contemporary Vitality: 53
Absaroke/Crow
John A. Grim
3. Rebalancing the World in the Contradictions of History: 85
Creek/Muskogee
Joel W. Martin
4. Wiping the Tears: Lakota Religion in the 104
Twenty-first Century
William K. Powers
5. The Continuous Renewal of Sacred Relations: 121
Navajo Religion
Trudy Griffin-Pierce
6. In the Space between Earth and Sky: 142
Contemporary Mescalero Apache Ceremonialism
Ines Talamantez
7. Synchretism, Revival, and Reinvention: 160
Tlingit Religion, Pre- and Postcontact
Richard Dauenhauer
8. Eye of the Dance: Spiritual Life of the Central Yup'ik
Eskimos 181
Ann Fienup-Riordan
9. Images of the Sacred in Native North American Literature 208
Franco Meli
Contributors 239
Index 241
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Understanding Native American
Religious Lifeways:
An Introduction
Lawrence E. Sullivan
I think it is necessary that the younger ones know something
about their religion. Their minds are confused, not knowing what
they should do. They should know that there are religions, that
their people have a religion that is different from other reli-
gions, and our religion was given to us Indian people long before
our time. — THOMAS YELLOWTAIL
Absaroke/Crow Sun Dance Chief1
All our actions are based on our religion — if that goes, we go as
a people. — BERNARD SECOND
Mescalero Apache Singer2
Religion stands at the heart of Native American life. Not the sort of
"religion" that is set apart, isolated from other domains in life. Rather,
religion in Native American culture is robust, an entire lifeway that
engages all that is vital and relates one to everything that matters.
This volume contains insightful essays on significant spiritual moments
in eight different Native American cultures. These essays are rare gifts
from writers who are themselves gifted with rare knowledge of and long
intimacy with Native American religious lives. They know the commu-
nities, speak the languages, walk the walk. Each essay encapsulates the
most central and moving spiritual elements in the cultures described.
1. Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography, as told to Michael O.
Fitzgerald (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 1, as cited in the article by John Grim
below.
2. Bernard Second, Mescalero Apache Singer, as cited in Claire R. Farrer, "Singing for
Life: The Mescalero Apache Girl's Ceremony," Southwestern Indian Ritual Drama (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1980), 125-59; quotation on 125.
2 Lawrence E. Sullivan
The book paints nine pictures of remarkable religious vitality, espe-
cially because these communities exist in the face of daunting odds.
These are not romantic visions that whitewash the devastating history
that Native peoples have endured for five centuries. The trail of broken
treaties, the decimations of populations through force of arms and dis-
ease, and the disintegration of cultures through hatred, ignorance, and
proselytism have provoked spiritual malaise as well as economic and
cultural destruction. Truly amazing and admirable, then, is the cultural
courage and spiritual fortitude of Native American peoples who have
persevered with their religious lives. Even more than holding the line,
the steadfast focus on spiritual heritage has instigated remarkable reli-
gious innovations, risings of the spirit in the form of new movements
as well as creative restatements of traditions long suppressed.
This book addresses all readers interested in religious life, especially
those wanting to know more about spiritual life as practiced on the con-
tinent of North America. For those of us who live on this continent,
it is essential to make ourselves one in understanding the many spiri-
tualities that characterize North America so distinctly. The land bears
a material bounty but also a spiritual heritage worked out in intimate
religious interactions with it over millennia. The religious practices of
Native Americans have consecrated the landscapes of North America,
building over time a spiritual endowment which we turn from at our
peril. Such escapism is a practiced habit in North America, where the
teaching of Native American religions is hardly a serious part of any
curriculum at any educational level. Willful blindness has yielded a vio-
lent history of relations with Native peoples as well as the scandalous
conditions into which peoples of exquisite culture have been plunged
since the time of the conquest. For the sake of the peace and well-being
that comes only from profound understanding and respect of others,
all of us on the continent would do well to take better cognizance of
the spiritual aspirations and religious accomplishments of those here
present, especially the people of its First Nations.
This respect and understanding as well as the desire to widen spir-
itual horizons in a way better suited to our day are the aims of this
book and its companion volume, which will present the religious life
of Mesoamerica and South America. Better knowledge of the most im-
portant religious ideas and practices of the world is, in fact, the goal
of the entire book series entitled "The Anthropology of the Sacred,"
which I edit with Julien Ries. Given the interactions, on nearly every
Understanding Native American Religious Lifeways 3
plane, of people from diverse religious cultures on the globe today, it
is incumbent on us to better understand the religious grounds of one
another's cultural behaviors, moral codes, and deepest aspirations. The
volume does not claim to be comprehensive or encyclopedic. It opens
nine windows on the spiritual practices and religious lifeways of Native
North America and offers a way of looking at each with high regard
and sympathetic understanding.
We focus on an anthropology of the sacred — by which we mean
each culture's understandings of fundamental realities, powers, and
processes as well as the religious responses they inspire in individu-
als and communities. Emphasis falls, therefore, on religious capacities:
how each culture sharpens religious sensitivity and cultivates spiritual
perception to make life a different way of seeing, sensing, and listening.3
By orienting humans toward transformative powers of the first order,
an anthropology of the sacred changes human life, not just in a neutral
or value-free fashion, but by impelling us to assume our own place in
the world and to achieve our most proper and vital way of relating to
all realities.
The spiritualities described in these essays aim to quicken the aware-
ness that life carries more depth than is taken in by glancing at its
surface. The aim is to reveal the inner meaning and true significance of
appearances. In some cases, even good and evil prove to be chimeras in
the end, for little or nothing lies beyond transformation when brought
into right relationship with the sources of sacrality. Critical recitation
of and reflection on religious narratives, the performance of associ-
ated rites, and the subsequent reordering of heart and life transform
relationships of all kinds. There is nothing automatic or mechanical
about the recitation of myth and the reenactment of ceremony. They
are exercises of the mind, heart, and body which may require arduous
effort, both inner and outer, and affect many levels: individual psyche,
physical form, social standing, and cosmic renewal. When performed
3. Vine Deloria, Jr., a Native American philosopher and writer from the Standing Rock Sioux
community, argued that diverse religious perceptions generate distinct views of the mysteries of
the universe. "The fundamental factor that keeps Indians and non-Indians from communicating
is that they are speaking about two entirely different perceptions of the world" (Vine Deloria,
The Metaphysics of Modern Existence [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979], vii). In 1996, in my
capacity as president of the American Academy of Religion, I invited Vine Deloria, Jr., to address
the plenary assembly of the Academy at its annual meeting. In his address, he emphasized that
accounts of Native American religious life have seldom been fair or neutral and that a reappraisal
of Native American religious life is essential to reestablishing right relations among peoples on
the continent and, indeed, to reestablishing health and well-being.