Sun Dance

• TRIBES AFFECTED: Nations of Plains Indians in Canada and America, including Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Crow, Dakota, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, Kiowa Apache, Lakota (Sioux), Plains Ojibwa, Plains Cree, Sarsi, Shoshone, Siseton, Stoney Nakoda, Ute, Iowa, Saulteaux, Wichita, Quapaw

SIGNIFICANCE: Conducted primarily to ask the Spirit to bring the Nation a successful bison hunt, the Sun Dance also celebrates the creation of the world, recreating the interaction of time, space, mass, and energy as perceived by various Tribes, all of whom added their own sequences of steps to signal syncretic features unique to their own perceptions

Historically, the Sun Dance was the most important religious ceremony of the various Plains Indians of North America, and a number of Indigenous peoples still celebrate it today. The ceremony was traditionally a multi-day event, held in late spring or early summer. While the nature and purpose of the Sun Dance ceremony varied between Indigenous Nations, in general, it was intended as a celebration of renewal, a supplication to the divine (as represented by the sun), and an opportunity for individuals to undergo grueling physical trials in exchange for personal insight or the future prosperity of the Nation.

History

The origins of the Sun Dance are uncertain, though practitioners tend to date it to thousands of years in the past. What is known is that the Sun Dance spread among the various Plains peoples throughout the nineteenth century, so that by 1890—the time when the Ghost Dance movement was sweeping many American Indian nations—the ceremony was being performed by Indigenous Nations from Saskatchewan to Texas. The dance itself was typically performed by young warriors, either as an offering on behalf of one's people, in fulfillment of a vow, or as a personal quest for a vision. It was a physically taxing and often painful undertaking; dances could last for hours or even days, and the dancers abstained from food and drink during this time. Some Indigenous people also incorporated piercing of the flesh into the ritual.

In 1883, the United States passed the Religious Crimes Code, which outlawed various traditional dances and other religious practices among Indigenous Americans. Canada similarly outlawed a number of Indigenous religious practices under the Indian Act in 1884; while the practices banned by the law did not specifically include dances, later amendments to the act made the prohibition against dancing explicit. These laws did not end the performance of the Sun Dance, but simply drove it underground.

Following the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which signaled a shift in US policy away from attempted assimilation of Indigenous peoples and toward the preservation of individual cultures, the Sun Dance began to be held openly again. However, it was still not explicitly protected as a form of religious expression; in 1971, for example, police arrested a large group of Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation "for having an illegal Sun Dance" (Lewis 65). Prohibitions against the Sun Dance and other religious ceremonies were officially lifted in Canada in 1951, by an amendment to the Indian Act, and in the United States in 1978, with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA).

Honoring and Giving Back

The Sun Dance, as performed by each individual Nation, is a picture of that Tribe’s relationship to the divine, and that relationship changes with time and with the various Sun Dance intercessors’ (holy men’s) interpretations. In the old times, the “Tree of Life,” the Sun, the Buffalo, the “Center of the Universe,” and warrior societies were honored with thanksgiving prayers for their very existence. In the long underground years from 1883 to 1934, many of the original instructions were reinterpreted. Much Christian, especially Catholic, influence came to bear. The Sun Dance, originally a thanksgiving rite, changed to a rite of repentance and self-mortification. Prior to this influence, there were flesh offerings, dragging of skulls, and suspension from skewers in the skin attached by rope to scaffolds or the center tree of life, but such acts were considered “giving back,” rather than a form of mortification or repentance.

Originally those who vowed to dance for personal reasons usually did so because their life or a loved one’s life had been spared or because a medicine was given and instruction for its use granted. Personal vows often took months, sometimes a year of preparation. Proper preparation for a Sun Dance required months of constructing and readying the instruments used in the ceremony. Abstinence from sexual activity was recommended, varying among Nations from four days to four months before the ceremony.

Sun Dances were powerful and deeply emotional rituals lasting several (usually four) days from opening to close and involving much personal sacrifice. Dancers abstained from food or water during the dance. They suffered from the heat and from hyperventilation caused by blowing continually on an eagle-bone whistle. Some dancers also used the ritual to make giveaways of personal possessions. In giving thanks by making a blood sacrifice in one of several ways at this communal annual ritual, people prayed for the welfare of the entire Nation.

According to Frances Densmore’s Teton Sioux Music (1918), among the Lakota people, a vow to dance was usually made at sunrise and was made to the daybreak star of understanding. A proper offering of bison fat was held in the left hand, and the right hand was raised as the vow was spoken. The spoken vow was only that the speaker would participate in a Sun Dance, but also that in his heart was the secret vow of the form of that participation. The man would vow either to dance, to be suspended from poles, or to drag buffalo skulls.

In mid-June 1876, many bands gathered along Rosebud Creek in southeastern Montana. It was known that the US Army was coming at them from three sides. Sioux, Cheyenne, and some Arapaho decided to hold the Sun Dance rather than run. Sitting Bull, among all the great men who were there, was chosen leader. Surrounded by the army, the Plains Nations held to their ancient beliefs and sought the power and a successful bison hunt. Sitting Bull knew that the army was close, but he also knew that the bands would be safe during the Sun Dance. On June 17, two days after the dance, the bands were attacked by General George Crook. One thousand Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors forced seven hundred army troops into retreat. They then moved to a river called the Little Bighorn, where they were attacked again by General George Custer. It was their last great victory.

The Sun Dance Today

Today, the dance seems to be primarily a celebration of personal renewal. There is a special relationship between the dancer and the spiritual world, and the Sun Dance is an event of a highly religious nature. The revival of this ritual in modern times is more than a visual representation. This ritual takes place on both mythological and real planes of existence and is the source of symbolic and expressionistic power. Because the mythological element is still so evident, many Sun Dance practitioners do not understand why nontribal members would want to participate. They believe that non-native people who dance without any clear understanding of the mythology being reenacted are probably dancing for personal gratification or egotistical need. Purists also complain about the crass commercialism and religious degeneration of these dances.

The most visible Sun Dances held in the United States in modern times are on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota and on the Crow Reservation in Montana. Many modern Sun Dances have become arenas where traditionalists and those who wish to capitalize on the ritual vent their anger toward one another. Yet modern Sun Dances satisfy the social needs of the Indigenous Nations, whether members are traditionalists or modernists. Thousands of Indigenous people attend the Sun Dances, setting up old-style nomadic camps and catching up with friends and relatives from other reservations. Regardless of whether the contemporary Sun Dance is a syncretic fusion of old and new, it exists as a powerful mediating force between factions on reservations and allows all in attendance to assert their religious beliefs.

Among all Nations that practice Sun Dances, there are certain similarities and consistencies. There is always the establishment of a sacred center, symbolizing the center of the universe. This helps any of the various Indigenous Nations experience their place of emergence, as nearly all Indigenous North Americans have myth stories describing their “emergence” into this plane of existence. At the finding of the center, prayers, songs, drums, and rattles are used to drive away evil. Members of the scout society who conduct their lives in an exemplary way are sent to find the tree which will be placed in the center. Every action pertinent to the ritual is supported by prayers and songs. Sweat lodges and purification by smoke from sage, sweetgrass, and cedar are central to the ritual. Sacred icons or instruments such as pipes, arrows, or sacred bundles are also central to the rituals. There is always a recitation of the mythology of the people. There are often naming ceremonies for children. At Sun Dances each year, tribal identities are upheld and sustained. There is always a feast at the conclusion of the dance.

The Sun Dance is conducted by holy men (interpreters), who talk with spirit forces. If the camp circle is very large and several holy men are present, they will decide among themselves who will conduct the dance. It is generally known who will be the intercessor, and often, the same man will serve in this capacity for a number of years. Bearing this responsibility requires long and special preparation. The duties traditionally included offering prayers for all the people, singing certain ancient songs at exactly the right time, painting sacred objects, handling the most sacred instruments of the nation, and preparing the sacred place. A Lakota man named Ziŋtkála Lúta, or "Red Bird," once told American anthropologist Frances Densmore, “The tribe would never appoint an unworthy man to the office of Intercessor. In his prayers and offerings, he represented the people, and if he were not a good man, Wakaŋ´taŋka [the divine] might not answer his petitions and grant fair weather; he even might send disaster upon the tribe.”

There is much confusion surrounding modern Sun Dances. Traditionalists say that one should dance to see and that too many people now dance to be seen. Many dance unprepared; others dance with little or no knowledge of the mythology of the people whose ceremony they are enacting. A proper Sun Dance may be likened to a carefully orchestrated symphony of the entire religion of the people. Power is called and set in motion for another year, “that the people may live.”

Bibliography

Bonnefoy, Yves, compiler. American, African, and Old European Mythologies. Translated by Wendy Doniger, et al., U of Chicago P, 1993.

Brown, Joseph Epes, recorder and editor. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. 1953. U of Oklahoma P, 1989.

Densmore, Frances. World of the Teton Sioux Indians: Their Music, Life, and Culture. Edited by Joseph A. Fitzgerald, foreword by Charles Trimble, World Wisdom, 2016.

Friesen, John W., and Virginia Lyons Friesen. First Nations in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Educational Frontiers. Brush Education, 2005.

Lewis, Thomas H. The Medicine Men: Oglala Sioux Ceremony and Healing. U of Nebraska P, 1990.

Mails, Thomas E. Sundancing: The Great Sioux Piercing Ritual. 2nd ed., Council Oak Books, 1998.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. 1932. Complete ed., U of Nebraska P, 2014.

"Sun Dance." Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.rel.046. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Sun Dance." Oklahoma Historical Society, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=SU008. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"The Sun Dance – Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačípi." Aktá Lakota Museum & Cultural Center, aktalakota.stjo.org/seven-sacred-rites/wiwanyang-wachipi-sun-dance. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.