What good are the ceremonies if they cannot save a people?

By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)
© 2009 Native Sun News

October 19, 2009

The outrage about the sweat lodge deaths reverberates around the country as everyone seeks an answer to questions they don't even know how to pose.

Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle said, "I am concerned for the two deaths and illnesses of the many people that participated in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona that brought our sacred rite under fire in the news. I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others are not our ceremonial way of life because of the way they are being conducted."

I am not going to dance around the consequences of Arthur Ray's stupidity because he was blatantly using a religious ceremony of the Native Americans to enrich himself and what is worse, he didn't know any of the sacred rites that accompany the inipi nor did he know the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota language, an intricate part of the ceremony.

According to the recognized and respected wicasa wakan (holy men) of the Sioux Nation, the Tunka Oyate (Spiritual Grandfathers) know and understand the Native tongues of the Sioux people and any inipi ceremony without this ingredient is no ceremony at all. That should have been the first clue to the new agers attempting to usurp the rituals of the Sioux, rituals that are much older than the Holy Bible.

Many Lakota are concerned about the deaths attributable to a botched sweat lodge ceremony. They have a lot more than this to worry about.

I look around Indian Country and I see the devastation and degradation, the hopelessness, the alcoholism, the drug addiction, the lack of respect for the elders, the many suicides among the young, the criminal acts of the gangs that now roam our reservations bringing death and severe moral damage to entire communities, the domestic violence, the abuse of children and spouses, and the total renunciation of any spirituality, and I am deeply concerned. I see the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and cancer among the Lakota and I am very concerned.

I see tribal members attending sweats and Sun Dances and then heading to the nearest bar or smoking a joint and I wonder how they can be such hypocrites. And then they sit around and brag about the sacrifice they believe they just made.

Arvol, why are the sacred rites you represent not being used to bring our own people back from the brink? Why aren't they being used to bring back the good health our people once enjoyed? Why is there an unemployment rate of 80 percent on the lands you call home? Why is there such a high rate of STD's and teen pregnancies in Lakota country? What good does it do to speak out and criticize an event that happened in Sedona, Arizona when it had no lasting impact upon the Sioux people? Aren't there terrible things happening in our own homelands, right under our noses, to worry about and try to change?
The criminal reports of rape, drug convictions, sexual child abuse, spousal abuse and even murders committed by enrolled members are mounting, and I wonder how any of these terrible things can be stopped and even reversed. I see these things and I am ashamed for us. I don't give a damn if we are called Indians, Natives, Native Americans or whatever because that is not where the problems lie. I just do not want the Indian people to be called lost alcoholics, abandoned, hopeless, worthless and doomed.

If there is the power in the Sacred Pipe Bundle of the Lakota, bring it out and use it before there is no longer a Lakota alive. There is a story I heard about a religious organization in New England that spent several years writing a Holy Bible in the language of a local tribe. When the Bible was completed there were no more Indians of that tribe left alive to read it.

It is good there is a Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and a 19th Keeper to bring it out and pray with it, but if this power cannot be used to save a people, that can make every Lakota/Dakota/Nakota pour that beer down the drain or dump that whiskey or wine on the ground or to burn those drugs, what good is it?

Arvol, what is the ultimate goal of the Pipe you hold? Where is the cleansing and healing power of inikaga (sweat lodge) if it is not to be used now to save our own people?

I ask these questions with respect because I fear for the future of the Sioux Nation and like many other concerned Lakota; I pray there is a way to save it.

(Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the publisher of Native Sun News. He was the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association, the 1985 recipient of the H. L. Mencken Award, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. Giago was inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2008. He can be reached at [e-mail])

 

 

Comments

[Bear Whitebow]

Tim,
I admire your posting, did send you a letter. My concern with Looking Horse is not only his statements, but his apparent lack of acknowlegement of other tribes with tradtions of the Pipe and other sacred ceremonies. With his words he makes it sound as though the other tribes that carry these ceremonies are not to be ackowledged at all. This simply cannot be. We must pull together in this time, this place upon Mother Earth, to pass along those things needed for us as well as other races to flurish. Healing must take place.
I honor is stance with regard to the Sioux Nation but also ask that he do the same with the other Nations! The Sioux are not the only tribe to carry Medicine and traditions, if these traditions, teachings, ceremonies do not get taught and passed down eventually they will become lost to all.......­..........­...and that will be a sad day indeed for all humanity.

[Dacotahsioux]

Pipe ceremonies and sweat lodge ceremonies and healing ceremonies and vision quests are not stagnate like christian ceremonies. There is no one right way to do them. Each Wicasa Wakan (Holy Man) in Lakota Language, have there own distinct way of running a ceremony. Followers of a certain Wicasu Wakan use his methods in their ceremonies. As far as certain ceremonies not being used today; what's wrong with that? We still have the pipe ceremonies, healing ceremonies, vision quest, sweatlodge and give-a-aways and naming ceremonies. These are what remain important to our people.

Barbara Duggan - SIsseton-Wahpeton Dakota Sioux

[digoweli]

Nice to hear. Thank you.

[Bear Whitebow]

Of the incident in Sedona....­..........­.....And Chief Arvol Looking Horse out of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
I write this not for controversy or to start a verbal war here. In Native Country things have been piss poor for a very long time. The extreme Traditionals of the Native Peoples still fight over who has right to do what and where.
The very unfortunate thing of this is the conflict prevents teachings, healings, etc that is so needed in this day and age. Now I am not going to slam the Oglala people, I am going to say that most of the fight so to speak comes out of them. Based on extensive readings I have done on Looking Horse, there is a lack of understanding from the Lakota nation to allow the tradtions and teachings out of other nations to be accepted. Simply put if your not Sioux, your not Indian.
Well I am sorry but I come from Blackfoot/­Apache/Gab­rilino tribes....­..........­.......I am Indian! They would have the rest of the world believe that the only traditions on ceremonies come only from them....this is a false statement.
Let us come together, heal and grow and move forward, before that time passes and it becomes too late.

I implore you to look into your own hearts, and see where you can be part of the solution instead of perpetuate more of the problem.

[DrJulienArbor]

Hi Tim,

From an article that you wrote a short time ago...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-giago/the-execution-of-chief-co_b_225841.html

There continues to be confusion regarding who has the Canunpa. Here are other examples...

http://www­.1851treat­y.com/canu­npa.html

http://www.dlncoalition.org/dln_issues/fiddlerstatement.htm

http://www.powwows.com/galleries/showphoto.php?photo=13603

[DrJulienArbor]

And still more...

http://www.lookingbackwoman.ca/The%20Story%20of%20Dupuis-Dupree%20Family%20Connection%20to%20the%20Pipe.htm

http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka.6.LBW.3.htm

Again... there are so many different version of the Canunpa and the ceremonies... how would anyone know if they were being properly followed or not? Here is but one example... along with a quote...

http://sleepingcrow.wordpress.com/2007/01/04/lakota-seven-sacred-rites/

"Throwing of the Ball (Tapa Wanka Yap):
This rite is no longer actively practiced. When it was popular, it was performed only by women, who used a ball filled with buffalo hair covered with a red-and-blue painted buffalo, which represented the material and spiritual aspects of the universe."

Is this one of the ceremonies... and is it no longer being practiced by the Lakota? Why not?

How can Native Americans expect for non-Native children to learn Native history if the tribal elders can't even agree upon what is true and what is not?

[digoweli]

Just read your bio. How are we to know when there is Freud, Perls, Jung, Erickson, Sullivan, etc. ? For a while I camped among the William Alanson White Sullivanians. My daughter's mother is one of them. You should hear what they say about things like you write about. Gossip is a tool of Indian culture but a virus when not contained by community. You can prove anything in the public forums and on the internet and be dead wrong. There have been good Indian newspapers like good Indian Universities. Most are now White. But you can't have a good Indian newspaper that avoids culture and right relationship. This food fight should never have been in the public forum. Its nobody else's business. As for Sedona, let the buyer beware. One point Tim made was the terrible 80% unemployment at home. That's down 10% from the 90% that was there when I was at Pine Ridge and Green Grass in 1980. Could that be because of the rise in traditional identity and pride? I suspect the Sundance has a lot to do with that since it tends to raise consciousness and build esteem in the people I've known who did it. Also its no one else's business anymore than you have the right to comment on the internal workings of any faith. IMHO

[digoweli]

Have just read a description of the sweat lodge held at Sedona in today's NYTimes. Clearly it was led by an entrepreneur who was on an ego trip with profit as the ultimate value, as reported. You can pray anywhere, but this entrepreneur leading hot sweat baths and guarding the door seems a sadistic fool. I was taught that a long fast, the building of a lodge, and praying for purification is not for the purpose of endurance, to get high or have an orgiastic experience. It is also not a "fun" thing to do. If you go into it to prove something then you will probably fail and are likely a danger to yourself and others. In my experience, if you go into it for knowledge or for your relationship with others then you should carefully choose a good guide, learn the system, the ceremonial articulates, and bring yourself into balance with the world, your community, your family and the web of life. Acquiring that knowledge will take years.

Full disclosure: I have gone to sweats to support my friends from other nations, and for personal reasons, but my own people don't use the sweatlodge except for special healings. But whether a sweat bath, or breaking the ice and going in seven times, either are temporary unless you mean to change and choose a good teacher to help. PS: When someone offers to sell you a poncho for your vision quest you should leave by the quickest exit. :>)

[Dacotahsioux]

No pipe or ceremony or religion will help any ndn people unless they want it and seek it deep within themselves. Many ndns HAVE changed their lives and live a life of sobriety but there are more that are not. The alcoholic parents have kids that become alcoholics by following in their parents footsteps as do the child abusers, women abusers etc.,etc., etc. We cannot blame the white world anymore for the way our people are on the reservations. With no hope, no goals, no future to look forward to, as there is nothing on most reservations.... then nothing will change. I do not believe in Arvol or even like him and I have never met him. I feel that he is a charlatan. Only in it for himself and his family.

Barbara Duggan

[digoweli]

To admit that you don’t know the Priest but choose to “feel” that he is a charlatan doesn’t make sense to me. Isn’t knowledge a requirement for judgment? Is your choice of “feelings” relevant to anyone but you? I don’t live there but, isn't it well documented that the Looking Horse family has sacrificed throughout the generations to keep the identity of the Sioux people alive?

Aren’t drugs usually individual reactions to systemic inadequacy? Sometimes a genetic trap based in genes but often a failure of the cultural system to provide alternatives? Are you saying the answer is to kill the “Indian identity” to save the “man” or are you saying that the answer is to have traditional culture disappear and blood quantum be the sole reservoir of identity?

Is not the beginning of all native traditions 1.) to “know yourself” then 2.) to know your people, their traditions, uniqueness and dreams and 3.) to study the “bible” of the natural world provided by the Creator of All?

Any group in America without capital and hope has little likelihood of survival and thus is not likely to be able to follow that path. The path is not and has never been, an easy one. But that doesn’t make your Priest a charlatan unless you are expecting magic from him. I mean no disrespect. Don't know you and your's is not my community. But this is a public forum.

[Dacotahsioux]

Digoweli, don't know who you are - I do know that you are highly intelligent but intelligence is nothing without true knowledge of a particular subject. I am not as intelligent as you are but am very knowledgeable with our OLD traditional beliefs and ways. I am Dacotah-SIoux from Lake Traverse Indian Reservation. My great-great Grandfather was Gabriel Renville - the last chief of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribe from which I descend from. There are many things that are said among our people about certain people that are never said in public and Arvol is one such person. My information is from reliable people and will not say what what said but again say I Arvol is not a man looking out for Lakota oyate .
I expect magic from no one.

[Tim Giago - Huffpost Blogger]

Digoweli, I approached Arvol face-to-face on Saturday and said the same things I wrote here. As for what is my newspaper doing? Every week we have articles about drugs, alcohol, tribal corruption, a health page that address diabetes and cancer and we have guest writers who are experts in these fields do articles for the paper. Our newspaper has exposed redlining by banks serving Indian reservations, false and fake medicine men and women, Bureau of Indian Affair deals that would have cost the tribes millions, the Trans-Canada pipeline that will run through Indian reservations, the uranium mining in the Black Hills that could have runoff into the aquifer that serves the Pine Ridge Reservation, and more. We will continue to serve our people by keeping them informed and for fighting for their rights. Tim

[digoweli]

Tim, Thanks for the reply. 1. I didn’t mean face to face unless you were speaking Harvard vs. the Buffalo Calf . Is there not a difference between a question (“Grandfather”) and a challenge (face to face)?
2. (Newspaper) All good stuff but how is it doing what I asked about? How is your identity any different from the Non-Indian muckraking paper? Are you seriously saying that only the Navajo and Pueblo can write about their cultures in a light that is contemporary and competitive with the local Messianic groups? What about Rupert Ross, David Peat, Gregory Cajete, Steven Newcomb, Benjamin Broome, Ruben Snake, Ladonna Harris, Robert Coles or the writers working in semiotics, psycho-linguistics, psychology, forestry etc. etc. Where’s your pride? Where’s the uniqueness of the Sundance? Why do the animals recognize the Sundance when the two leggeds still plead for magic and superstition? The Sundance isn’t superstition. What about John Warfield and Tribal Issues Management Structure (TIMS)? What about Arthur Amiotte and your Art or Jane Lind and great performing artistry? Why does the white world use our people while our own people try to hoard that which cannot be hoarded? Why are the three fools dying in Sedona anymore important than the three runners who died in the Detroit marathon last week?

3. As for fighting? Perhaps the future is on the path of peace as the current thirteen cycles of war finish. The problem is, what does that mean? Obviously it isn’t automatic.

[digoweli]

Osiyo
The 19th Keeper needs no defense but he does need respect and help. All Native Priests have only been "legal" since 1978 (Freedom of Religion Act for American Indians by U.S. Congress). Before 1978 it was the "Middle Eastern Messianic Desert Religions", via European Americans, all the way for almost one hundred years. (1883 U.S. Government Religious Crimes Codes). Medicine Priests are now legal but that does not magically confer identity nor the benefits of ceremonials.

If you are to take advantage of the ceremonials you have to know what they are for. They are not magic or hocus pocus. They are indigenous spiritual technology, agricultural technology, forestry methods, sensorium laboratories, Artistic systems, teachers of children’s processes of personal growth and alignment and ancient political methods that teach “systems thought” as successfully as the current scientific system’s thought being used by major corporations, nations and the U.S;. Department of Defense. (see TIMS and Interactive Management). David Bohm found that Native languages were more appropriate to current Quantum thought than English. Ceremonials also teach gifting monetary policy. But a ceremonial is only as strong as the quality of its students and its belief.

What is your newspaper doing to turn your people back upon the richness of their identity? To develop the children through the genius of traditional spiritual systems? The 19th Keeper could use your help so that he won't be the last. Also,you didn't approach him properly in print..

[redbow40]

Great comment Digoweli, thanks for your input!

[digoweli]

You are welcome,

[radmul]

One charlatan criticizing another. If you want to have better lives for your people lose the superstitious nonsense and teach them to read.

[digoweli]

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."-Mark Twain,

[SelenicMagick]

Radmul... Native Americans are a whopping ONE PERCENT of the population. Did you know that little fact? Do you know that Native Americans give up the greatest percentage of their children in service to the US Government via the military? A greater percentage than even whites. Our children are NOT illiterate, nor are they stupid.

Our children DO have a severe problem though... a problem that is rampant in EVERY area of the United States where poverty is an issue. IGNORANCE on the part of alleged educated adults.

[radmul]

here is just one study demonstrating the horrible educational achievement of which I speak. Again if you want people to have a decent life quit feeding them superstion.
http://www.ade.state.az.us/researchPolicy/grad/2000GradRateReport.pdf

[redbow40]

First off, I believe we will survive this. It won't be easy. There is a Indian health bill which I hope will be passed and signed by President Obama. That will be a big help. I read something about employment issues being discussed with Hilda Solis. A U.N. report due out this year reporting on the poverty issues facing us will be given to the president. I cannot imagine President Obama ignoring a horrifying poverty report from the U.N. I wonder when will indian nations start discussing decriminalizing marijuana on the reservations? Get the booze out,bring the marijuana in. It would help tremendously. When will Indian people take control of our own matters? I believe President Obama would totally be open to this. Why aren't we talking to him about this?

[SelenicMagick]

Drugs aren't the answer any more than alcohol is. Many of our children see the elders as "defeated" without understanding how long this particular war of attrition has been going on and how demoralizing the last 150 or so years have been. We MUST teach them more than simply the history... we MUST teach them "respect for self" and "respect for others" as well as building their self esteem and their much-violated trust.

"Why aren't we talking to him about this?"

Because he's really no different on the issues involved than President Bush or John McCain.