Native American Religion

[Gentle Deer Lion Tamer]

Background

What do we mean when we speak of Native American religion? Unlike
Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, it has no single founder. Unlike
Judaism, it is not the ongoing story of a people with a strong sense
of their own identity. Neither does it resemble Hinduism, with its
ancient and all-inclusive adaptiveness. In a sense, Native American
religion does not exist at all: There is no one religious expression
common to the 250 distinct Native American peoples still surviving as
America moves through the 21st century. And complicating the question
even further is the fact that few Native American people today can say
for sure how their ancestors worshiped before the onslaught of
European immigrations: Too much death lies between the present and pre-
Columbian America, too much cultural devastation, too many forced
conversions to Christianity. The chain of elders preserving tradition
was broken by disease and war. Many contemporary Native Americans
interested in knowing their own heritage have found themselves in the
peculiar position of needing to consult anthropologists for
information.

But anthropology has its own problems. Serious attempts to study
Native American culture did not begin until the mid-to-late 19th
century, 200-300 years after the first European conquests, and 50-100
years after the beginning of serious western expansion. Many Native
American people no longer lived in their sacred homelands, and numbers
of eastern tribes had completely disappeared. Even when
anthropological studies were undertaken, early reports frequently
judged Native Americans by the values of European men, discounting
their stores of wisdom, their religious insights, and their different
approaches to gender roles. Often, the Native Americans interviewed
didn't make anthropologists' jobs any easier: The Wintu of California
had a saying that when the white men come, "...we will forget our
songs." According to the Lakota, "If it was told to a white man, it is
untrue." The Hopi learned early about anthropologists' love of
publishing and permanently closed their ceremonials to all but their
own people. The list could go on and on.

Anthropologists divide the Native American cultures of North America
into seven groups: Eastern Woodlands, Southeastern, Plains, Plateau,
Great Basin, Southwestern, and Northwest Coastal. Each of these
geographical groupings contains many distinct peoples with only the
broadest characteristics in common, each with their own culture and
religious beliefs. Any attempt to briefly summarize such a rich
variety of peoples -- as this page does -- is going to involve inexact
generalizations: It can't be helped. Where space permits, examples
appear from different tribal groups, but they do not begin to reflect
the diversity of Native American spirituality.

Native American - Myth

What part do sacred stories and history play in Native American
religion?

In Native American narratives, one can notice two kinds of time: A
time before time, or outside time (mythic time), where things are not
as they are here, and historical time, similar in most respects to
contemporary life. In mythic time, no barriers exist between the
spirit and physical worlds. Earth, animals, plants, and humans
understand each others' languages. Spirit beings walk the earth openly
and interact with human beings freely, sometimes helping, sometimes
harming, sometimes mating with them. Gifted humans may venture into
spirit realms -- these persons are often called shamans. Native
American creation stories, migration accounts (stories of how a people
found its way to the sacred homeland), and stories of culture heroes
(those who gather the wisdom and rituals that hold a people together)
are stories of mythic time. The winter counts of Plains peoples
(pictographic summaries of passing years, each year symbolized by a
memorable event) are examples of ordinary history.

Stories of mythic time often have the ability to bring the story's
audience into that time -- into the non ordinary time of the spirit
world. Storytelling among Native Americans -- when the story is of
mythic time -- dissolves boundaries. Reenacting such a story overlaps
the worlds even more powerfully, filling the people with the power
existing in the original happening. The smoking of the Lakota pipe
brings the spirit of its giver (White Buffalo Calf Woman) into their
midst, as well as joining the smokers together in familial
relationship with all of nature. Among the Iroquois, ritually donning
a mask made in the image of the Great Defender, or humpbacked one,
(assigned by the Creator to cure sickness) brings his healing power
into a sickroom.

Family: Narrative and ritual are as inseparable in Native American
life as spirit and flesh. Much traditional ritual recreates myth,
bringing the story's power into everyday life. White Buffalo Calf
Woman's pipe is one example. Among the Northwest Coastal peoples,
magnificent masked dancers recreate the mythic beginnings of their
families, bringing the power of the founding being -- raven, killer
whale, etc. -- into their midst.. Among the Huron, an annual ceremony
dramatizes and fulfills individuals' significant night-dreams, thus
bringing spiritual health to the whole community. The Navajo of the
Southwest recreate the stories of the Yei, or Holy People, in their
sand paintings, curing illness through the power of the overlapping
spirit world.

Native American - Doctrine

How do traditional Native Americans explain their beliefs?

Traditional Native Americans have had little interest in developing
what is thought of as religious doctrine. Their participation in
nature and spirit does not lend itself easily to standing apart and
analyzing. Inherited tradition, spiritual experiences of ordinary
people and religious specialists, judgment of the elders, and the
welfare of the people all interacted creatively in each generation to
shape religious reality. Spirituality was a fluid thing, responding to
changes in a variety of circumstances.

Significant dreams and visions played important roles in shaping
beliefs. The 19th century movement known as the Ghost Dance,
culminating among the Lakota in the massacre at Wounded Knee,
originated in the west with one man's vision of the white race's
defeat and the buffalo's return. The 19th century Iroquois prophet
Handsome Lake almost single-handedly halted the disintegration of his
people's religious traditions by his vision led institution of the
Iroquois Long house religion. White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared among
the Lakota sometime after 1500 and reshaped their whole approach to
life.

Traditional Native American religion today has lost much of its
fluidity. Like many dispossessed peoples, Native Americans often look
on what remains of their original culture as infinitely precious --
too precious to risk losing. In this way, tradition can harden into an
inflexible shell of traditionalism, no longer responsive to the
people's experiences or to the changes around them. However, as more
Native Americans seek to recapture the wisdom of past generations and
apply it to their contemporary lives, their traditions will have a
greater chance of revival, as well as ongoing transformation. In
academic terms, Native American spirituality may be described as
panentheism (deity/spirit present in, as well as beyond, everything).
Such a world view assumes the existence of Spirit beyond the visible
world, but also dwelling in all that is. Words like animism (belief in
spirits in natural phenomena, such as trees, rocks, animals, fire) are
commonly used to describe Native American religion, but when one
neglects to include the broader presence of Spirit beyond physical
nature, this explanation is incomplete. The Lakota concept of Wakan
Tanka (most frequently translated as Great Spirit) illustrates
panentheism well: Wakan Tanka is the Spirit over, under, and
throughout all of the physical world, its guiding principle, present
in individual phenomena yet not confined to it, not strictly singular
nor plural, neither truly personal nor impersonal. Manitou/manitos of
the Algonkians is a similar concept.

Native American Society

How Does American Spirituality Work Itself Out In The World?

Each Native American people handed down its own creation narratives
and migration accounts, usually telling of creation by benevolent
deities/spirits, who placed the people in their sacred homelands.
These homelands often contained the site of a group's emergence from
the earth in mythic time and were almost always seen as the world
center, the most important and powerful site on earth, around which
all else revolved -- and where ritual must be performed to be
effective. Spiritually speaking, a Native American people's
relationship to their homeland was more like that of a tree to the
earth than of a European's attachment to his or her property. The
various removals that tore Native Americans from their sacred lands
truly left them rootless -- in the sense of a tree that is torn in
two. Today, Great Basin peoples continue to pursue long-standing
disputes with the federal government about its use of their Nevada
homelands for military test ranges. The Black Hills of South Dakota,
long the sacred homeland of the Lakota, but now teeming with tourist
glitz, are the subject of lengthy, unresolved treaty violation suits
by the Lakota people. The Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni of the Southwest are
among the fortunate ones permitted to retain a core of their ancestral
lands, thus enabling their traditions to survive more nearly intact.

There is no one pattern of religious structure in Native America.
Remnants of the urban Mississippian priesthood still remained
throughout much of the Southeast in the early contact period. In the
urban cultures of the Southwest, each sacred society (called kivas by
some) had its own ritual leaders or priests. Complex ceremonials and
hierarchies characterized both areas. Among the Woodland peoples, a
variety of religious practitioners thrived, specializing in various
means of influencing the spirit world, healing, and foretelling the
future. Some Great Basin groups sought out persons struck by lightning
as their religious leaders. Shamans among the California Shasta tended
to be the daughters of established female shamans. Among the Plains
peoples, ordinary members of the community became spiritual leaders
based on personal abilities. Various names describe the non-priestly
religious leaders of Native America: medicine man or woman, shaman,
diviner, herbalist, conjurer, healer, crystal gazer, and dreamer are
only a few. Where one professional responsibility begins and another's
ends is often unclear.

At the heart of traditional Native American society is the value
placed on the welfare of the group as a whole. Selfless devotion to
"the people" characterized almost all Native American groups.
Southeastern leaders demonstrated their greatness by how well they
cared for their people and how many spoils of war they could
accumulate -- in order to give them all away. Willingness to suffer
and die was assumed when the safety or survival of the group was at
stake. As the future of the tribe, children were treasured and
protected. Women were revered as life-bearers and wielded significant
power in many councils. (Most Native American societies were
matrilineal, tracing the descent of all children through the mother's
line, rather than the father's.)

Most groups' names for themselves translate in their own languages as
"the people," or "the humans," in contrast to all other groups, who
were necessarily somewhat less than human. Small scale warfare with
these other groups was an essential part of Native American life, a
means of earning glory and respect and of acquiring slaves,
possessions, and sometimes adopted family members to increase the
group's strength. In pre-contact America, it never approached the
levels of European inspired warfare, nor was its primary goal
slaughter.

Native American - Ethics

How Do Native Americans Address Right and Wrong

Concepts of right and wrong in traditional Native American societies
tend to be attached to actions that either promote or diminish the
even flow of life -- the balance -- that must be kept at all times.
Human beings have obligations to behave in certain ways toward all
other aspects of creation. If these obligations are honored, harmony
and balance are preserved. Poor relationships of any kind --
relationships that fail to follow patterns laid down in mythic time --
destroy the balance, whether it is a relationship between human and
human, human and spirit, human and animal, or human and plant. The
Navajo word hozho points to all of this. Although it is difficult to
translate into English, its sense is of balance, harmony, beauty, and
completeness. Wrong actions are those that disrupt balance and
harmony, jeopardizing the well-being of a people and the cosmos as a
whole. The Cherokee, a people who share characteristics of both
Woodlands and Southeastern regions, developed a complex system of
keeping this balance. In their world, all phenomena belonged to groups
of similar beings, each of which had its opposite. Opposing groups
must never be associated with each other except with strict controls
and ritual limits. Men and women were members of two such groups
(masculine and feminine), and their contacts were carefully
controlled. Fire and water were another such pair.

A different, crucial kind of balance was achieved among human beings,
animals, and plants. According to traditional Cherokee narratives,
humankind's irresponsible killing of animals for food and clothing
caused great resentment among the animals, who decided to infect
humankind with a new disease every time an animal was killed. Plants
took pity on the suffering humans and offered themselves, with their
wisdom, as cures for the animal plagues. Ever since that time, plants
have been allies of the Cherokee, and hunters have taken great care to
follow proper rituals to honor the spirits of animals killed in the
hunt. Each tribe developed its own unique formulas connecting human
behavior to the patterns of the universe. Sometimes the resulting laws
were as complex as those of the Mississippian priesthoods in the
Southeast. Sometimes they laid subtle ceremonial requirements on the
members of exclusive groups, such as the kivas of the Southwest or the
warrior societies of the Plains. Sometimes they were simple and
unambiguous, almost absorbed with mothers' milk. But in every case,
they attempted to align the tribe's actions with spiritual realities
perceived in the universe around them.

Native American - Experience

What is the nature of religious experience in Native American
religion?

Individual experience of Spirit was central to much of Native American
religion, and the vision quest, common to most of the continent, was
the most widespread form of such experiences. Within the priestly
cultures of the Southeast and Southwest, however, religious guidance
was provided by the priests, who also acted as intermediaries between
people and Spirit in major festivals. Visions were generally not
sought by ordinary people. Some shaman led peoples also limited vision
experiences to those called to be shamans, but, in general, non-
priestly societies tended to place greater significance on individual
encounters with Spirit.

The vision quest was a structured search for personal vision found
throughout pre-Columbian Native America and even to some extent in the
Southwest and Southeast. In its most basic form, a vision quest
involved an individual alone in the wilderness, spending a number of
days fasting and seeking spiritual power/vision for life. In most
societies, the vision quest was part of a youth's ritual passage into
adulthood. In some societies both boys and girls went on vision
quests, in others only boys. Often, a young woman's seclusion took
place inside a special lodge, rather than in the wilderness. For some
groups, the vision quest was solely a ritual of puberty, a rite in
which a young person acquired his or her lifelong spirit guardian.
Among other peoples, particularly in the Plains, anyone might seek
supernatural guidance in a quest at any critical point in life -- or
simply quest periodically as a spiritual discipline. The quest held
the greatest significance for young men training to be warriors:
Without a spirit guardian, no man survived many battles.

The Chickasaw of the Southeastern region required forest fasts of
their young men in order for them to receive animal guardians, but the
animal received was predetermined by the youth's clan. The young man's
male relatives cared for him during his fast, teaching him all he
needed to know about his clan spirits, but no vision was sought.
Visions were the privilege of religious leaders alone. Among some
Northwest Coastal peoples, the search for spirit guardians became
highly ritualized. Like the Chickasaw, the guardian received was
predetermined by a boy's birth clan or clan by marriage. The youth's
isolation in the forest was brief and symbolic, and the spirit
possession resulting from it carefully choreographed. Some Plateau and
Great Basin tribes, as well as a number from the Eastern Woodlands,
considered a vision to be a call to a shaman's vocation. Among the
Southwestern pueblos, even though their ceremonial system focused on
group experience, placing no significance on acquiring spirit
guardians, individuals still sought solitary visions at times,
particularly in aid of hunting, healing, and craft design.

All Native American religions involve rituals that gather the
community together in common bonds of experience. Among the Iroquois
peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, each year in spring and fall,
community ceremonies are led by the "false faces," wooden masked
impersonators of the spirit who protects the people from disease, to
drive all disease away. One of the most significant annual rituals
among the Southeastern peoples was the Green Corn Ceremony, in which
the people purified themselves, cleaned their houses, fasted and
prayed, and offered up the first ears of green corn in the fire,
seeking Spirit's blessing for a healthy harvest. The high point of the
festival was the relighting of the sacred fire by the religious leader
and its distribution to all the community homes. The multi-day
ceremonies concluded with a great feast of celebration.

The Sun dance of the Plains peoples varied from place to place, but
was generally held in the summer, at a time when help and insight was
especially needed from spirit beings; it took place over several days,
during which time men (and in some cases women, although separately
and with different ritual) danced around a central pole, often staring
at the sun, sometimes attached to the pole by thongs through their
flesh: They were offering Spirit the only thing that was truly theirs
-- their own flesh -- in an attempt to rouse the spirits' pity and
secure their help. At the two-day Zuni Shalako ceremonial held each
year in late fall, the Zuni people celebrate the spirit
beings' (called kachinas, like the Hopi) arrival at Zuni, bringing
blessings and rain. All the scattered Zuni people who can come home to
Zuni for the all night dancing and feasts.

Although many Native American groups placed great importance on
individual spiritual experience, they were never spiritual consumers,
nor were such experiences private. All supernatural encounters were
evaluated, and accepted or rejected, by the elders of the group. The
purpose of such experience was always the strengthening of the
individual for good of the people, never simply personal edification.