The Sunrise Dance : A Rite Of Passage

A religious leader claimed he received a vision that told him to perform this dance and that it would bring the destruction and rebirth of the world. It also promised that all dead ancestors would rise up to rejoin the living. White Americans feared these dances and the United States government viewed it as an ongoing resistance movement so they had it terminated. The dance came to a catastrophic end on December 29, 1890, at the Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. American troops killed many Lakota people, including women and children who had gathered to celebrate the dance. The United States government also intervened in 1904 when the sacred Sun Dance was officially banned because it was considered corrupt and dangerous. Despite these setbacks, it is important to note that there are still about 700 recognized tribes in the United States today. To discuss further on the rites of passage for Native Americans, we see that the Kinaalda and the Vision Quest are very important to their culture. The Kinaalda is a puberty rite for young Native American girls. “Girls are believed to take on the identity and spiritual qualities of the Changing Woman during the ritual. The Changing Woman was the first girl to ever experience Kinaalda and she is seen as the model ritual for all girls. Because a girl takes on the identity of

Different aspects of dances all represent something special and meaningful to each specific tribe. Firstly, the purposes of the Native American’s dances are for entertainment, religious rituals, successful hunts, harvests, to give thanks, prayer, victory, mythology, along with many more. (Weiser- Alexander and Alexander) In the video Native American Indian

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. -Elizabeth Atwood LawrenceAs the most important ritual of the nomadic Plains Indians, the Sun Dance in itself presents many ideas, beliefs, and values of these cultures. Through its rich symbolism and complicated rituals we are able to catch a glimpse

I learned that the Sun Dance was the most important religious ceremony of many tribes in the 19th century and it occurred at the time of the Summer Solstice. It would last from four to eight days starting at sunset and then ending at sunset. I learned that everything they, do even when they start and end, has a reasoning behind it. The significance

The “Apache Girl’s Rite of Passage” in talked about in a video rather than a story. Here, the ritual is a coming of age ritual. It is for 13 year old, Dachina, coming to become a woman. This ritual will prove her character, endurance, and strength. It proves that Dachina is ready to become a woman and is ready to handle all the responsibility that is coming her way. This ritual occurs every 4th of July. The mothers of the girls spend more than an entire year preparing for this. A huge task for them is preparing their medicine bag. The entire ceremony last 4 whole days because Dachina will go through all 4 stages of life which is and infant, child, adolescent , and a woman. To test her endurance, she has to dance all night for 10 hours! This ritual comes with very strict rules, little sleep, and having to set aside all emotions. She gets dusted in pollen, as a form of protection. The men fill a basket full of blessed objects and the girls run around the basket 4 times on the last day. When the tipi falls, it marks that they passed the ceremony, they are handed the medicine bag and they are now women.

In Native American religions a dance called the Sun Dance is used as the rite of passage for young men. You men would stick a rod though their peck and dance around a pole of three days as a way to become connected with the Spirit World. The pole is used to show strength and the boys would quickly have to get the rod out by dancing. Another rite of passage in Native Americans religions is the Vision Quest. Young boys and girls partake in this to find their spirit animals. They go into the woods mostly naked and sometimes covered in body paint and fast in the woods for days. Eventually a spirit comes to them, most of the time as an animal but it can be in human form, and is said to be their guardian

Sun Dance is a highly sacred ceremony for many sects of Indigenous peoples in North America. The Sun Dance ceremony is practiced mainly within Plains tribes and has survived as a tradition for hundreds of years. The nations amongst which it was created include the seven tribes of the Lakota nation, the Blackfoot, the Cheyenne, and the Arapaho. Over time the ceremony spread to the southern Plains tribes, the Kiowa and Comanche, as well as the northern Plains peoples, such as the Crees of Saskatchewan and Sarcees of Alberta. Many others across the Plains region now practice Sun Dance, including the Ponca, Hidatsa, Ute, Ojibwa, Pawnee, and more. The original name derives from the Lakota term Wi wanyang wacipi, meaning “sun gazing dance.”

The Blackfoot Indian tribes held a major tribal ceremony in the summer, for which all the bands came together. It was called the Sun Dance. By engaging in the Sun Dance, their prayers would be carried up to the Creator, who would bless them with well being and abundance of buffalo. Other than the winter, when a few bands might join together for shelter, this was the only time the entire tribe came

An additional polarity of Hindus and Buddhists are their unique rituals and practices. The most fundamental ceremonies for every Hindu are those that involve the rites of passage. These begin with the first time a child eats solid food. The last rites are the funeral ceremonies and the yearly offerings to dead ancestors. Rotating prayer wheels is a ritual of Tibetan Buddhists. The prayer wheels have inscribed mantras or sacred chants. The wheel is believed to release benevolent forces and acquire merit for the worshipper.

Imagine you are dancing all night and you can't show any emotion, you can't show any exhaustion or tiredness. That is what Indian girls of the Apache tribe must go through. In class we have watched a video called “Apache Girl Rites of Passage.” In this video a girl named Dachina goes through a grueling journey to become a women. In addition to that story read a short story called “The Medicine Bag.” In the Medicine Bag a boy named Martin goes through his on struggles and rites of passage from his Lakota family traditions and his struggle of accepting his tribe. In addition to these stories I researched a tribe from Ethiopia called the Hamar tribe. The Hamar tribe has a much more scary rite of passage to become a man which a boy has to jump

Every rite of passage have different things that they have to do in different cultures, they also have some similarities. The Apache girl’s rite of passage and Lakota rite of passage have little similarities and many differences. The things that they have to do to become a adult are different and the things that they have to go through are the same in some ways. By the looks of it, it seems that they are different in every single way. Look closer and you can tell that they are the same in some ways.

A rite of passage is defined as a ceremony marking a significant transition or an important event or achievement, both regarded as having great meaning in lives of individuals. In Sharon Olds' moving poem "Rite of Passage", these definitions are illustrated in the lives of a mother and her seven-year-old son. The seriousness and significance of these events are represented in the author's tone, which undergoes many of its own changes as the poem progresses.

The Dreaming is communicated through songs, stories and rituals, in which is explains how the “creator ancestors shaped the land and brought it to life” (Gammage, 2011, p. 1419). All of life, from religion, geography, life and more, are explained and connected to the Aboriginal people’s spirituality, land and family through this form of communication. The Dreamtime “shapes the Aboriginal people’s view of the universe and themselves” (Wierzbicka & Goddard, 2015, p. 43). The passing on of the Dreaming stories from one generation to the next was a “most important aspect of education” (Edwards, 1998, p. 83) and is seen as the fundamental reality. Edwards stated that through ritual, humans are able to “enter into a direct relationship with

The religion of the Ghost Dance started with a man named Wovoka. On January 1, 1889, he had a ‘vision’ during a solar eclipse in Nevada (Peterson 27). It brought a message of hope to the oppressed Indians of only the Indians living. The Indians called Wovoka the ‘Messiah’ (“The Ghost Dance” par. 1) and it was believed that he would bring a “day of deliverance” (Phillips 16) to the

Rituals around the world all teach valuable lessons that help initiates see the value and importance of life. Each culture has different rituals that provide experiences for their youth to learn these valuable lessons of life. Many coming of age rituals are intense procedures. The Amazon's Satere Mawé youth enter adulthood through the bullet-ant glove initiation, teaching courage and endurance, and the crocodile scaring ritual that the men from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea participate in teaches them pain and accomplishment.