UNDERSTANDING THE GHOST DANCE:

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UNDERSTANDING THE GHOST DANCE

• PRAYER FOR AN NEW WAY

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Black Elk(1863-1950)

• I did not know then how much was ended. When I
  look back now from this high hill of my old age,
  I can still see the butchered women and children
  lying heaped and scattered along the crooked
  gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still
  young. And I can see that something else died
  there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the
  blizzard. A peoples dream died there. It was a
  beautiful dream... The nations hoop is broken
  and scattered. There is no center any longer,
  and the sacred tree is dead.
• Black Elk

Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) was a famous Wichasha
Wakan (Holy Man) of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) who
participated at the age of twelve in the Battle
of Little Big Horn (1876) and was wounded in the
Wounded Knee massacre in 1890.
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Ghost Dance Websites

• http//php.indiana.edu/tkavanag/visual5.html
• James Mooneys Account and Photographs
• http//msnbc.com/onair/msnbc/TimeAndAgain/archive/
  wknee/ghost.asp?cp11
• Connecting the Events of 1890 and 1973
• http//www.150.si.edu/150trav/remember/r519.htm
• Ghost Shirt, National Museum of the American
  Indian
• http//www.dickshovel.com/wkup.html
• Chronology of Events before Wounded Knee
  Massacre
• http//www.sdpb.org/tv/oto/lostbird/
• Story of Lost Bird

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The Paiute Prophet Wovoka (Jack Wilson)1856-1932
" I want my people to stay with me here. All the
dead men will come to life again. Their spirits
will come to their bodies again. We must wait
here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to
meet them in the bosom of our mother. " -Wovoka,
Paiute Prophet
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Origins of the Ghost Dance

• The Ghost Dance religion began with Wovoka's
  Great Revelation. On New Year's Day 1889, Wovoka
  had a religious revelation wherein he "died" and
  went to heaven.
• God gave him a dance and a message of peace to
  share with all people. He was to stress
  brotherhood among all Indian people, and between
  the Indian and White.
• Wovoka proclaimed his stirring message and taught
  his people the Ghost Dance, a round dance that
  lasted for five nights. Men and women, their
  fingers intertwined, shuffled sideways around a
  fire, dancing to the songs that Wovoka led.

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Geographical Extent of the Ghost Dance
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The Ghost DanceDrawings and Photographs by
Anthropologist James Mooney
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Ghost Dance Shirts
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Sitting Bull 1831 December 15, 1890
Sioux Medicine Man who led 1,200 Sioux and
Cheyenne warriors against the US 7th Cavalry
under George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of
the Little Bighorn on June 25th, 1876. Though he
did not participate personally in the battle, the
chiefs were spurred on by a dream that Sitting
Bull had in which a group of American soldiers
tumbled into his encampment.
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Timeline

• The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming
  life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves
  confined to reservations dependent on Indian
  Agents for their existence.
• The Sioux version of the Ghost Dance differed
  from that of Wovoka and other Plains groups
  Sioux believed that a tidal wave of new soil
  would cover the earth, bury the whites, and
  restore the prairie and the buffalo.
• In a desperate attempt to return to the days of
  their glory, many believed that the Ghost Dance
  would hasten salvation. Many dancers wore
  brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of
  eagles and buffaloes.
• These "Ghost Shirts" they believed would protect
  them from the bluecoats' bullets. During the fall
  of 1890, the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux
  villages of the Dakota reservations, revitalizing
  the Indians and bringing fear to the whites.
• A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired his
  superiors in Washington, "Indians are dancing in
  the snow and are wild and crazy....We need
  protection and we need it now. The leaders should
  be arrested and confined at some military post
  until the matter is quieted, and this should be
  done now."
• The order went out to arrest Chief Sitting Bull
  at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull
  was killed in the attempt on December 15.
• Chief Big Foot was next on the list.

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Timeline

• http//www.hanksville.org/daniel/timeline2.html

Big Foot as a young man and dead at Wounded Knee
1890 - The Ghost Dance religion sweeps across
the Sioux reservation. Sitting Bull is killed on
December 15. On December 29, Big Foot's band of
Minneconjous, trying to reach Pine Ridge and the
protection of Red Cloud after hearing of Sitting
Bull's death, are massacred at Wounded Knee
Creek on December 29 by Custer's old outfit, the
Seventh Cavalry.
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A SurvivorLost Bird (1890-1920)
To support herself she toured with Buffalo Bills
Wild West Show
Lost Bird was adopted by Gen. Leonard Colby and
his suffragist wife, Clara Bewick Colby. The
babys original name died at Wounded Knee, along
with her chance to grow up in her own culture.
She became. literally and figuratively, Zintkala
Nuni, the Lost Bird.
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Wounded Knee Today
Re-interment of Lost Birds remains at Pine Ridge
Reservation
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Religion

• Ritual Standardized activities that honor and
  influence deity.
• A collection of rituals, organized to reflect a
  cosmology, that mobilizes supernatural powers for
  the purpose of achieving or preventing
  transformations of circumstances.
• Belief Personal cosmology, symbolic behavior,
  and guiding principles.
• A set of symbolic forms and acts which relate
  humans to the ultimate conditions of their
  existence.

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Role of Religion

• reduces anxiety by explaining the unknown
• provides comfort by assuring supernatural aid
• provides a framework of right and wrong
• sets standards for acceptable behavior
• shifts burden of decision making from individuals
  to supernatural powers
• helps maintain social solidarity

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Ritual Specialists

• Those who perform religious activities
  (performances, offerings) on behalf of a group.

Mapuche (Argentina) ritual specialist
Rabbi
Indonesian ritual specialist
Orthodox Priests
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Revitalization Movement

• Deliberate, conscious, organized efforts by
  members of a society to create a more satisfying
  culture.
• Characterized by
• a remembered time of calm and prosperity
• a period of collective stress, followed by
• a period of revitalization and transformation,
  leading to
• a new understanding and accommodation of
  conditions

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Characteristics of Revitalization Movements

• hopelessness, dire circumstances and degraded
  conditions, no recourse to ordinary channels (ex
  legal, social)
• charismatic leader (in contact with supernatural
  forces) who has a vision through an
• altered state of consciousness (trance through
  stimulants, fatigue, etc)
• mazeway reformulation (born again experience,
  see the world with new eyes)

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Syncretism
the blending of indigenous and foreign symbols,
rituals, and other traits to form a new system.
Design Elements Catholic priest, stars and
colors from the American flag, the turtle who
brought soil for the Worlds creation, and birds,
messengers to the spirit world.
Ghost Dance Dress, Arapaho peoples, central
plains states, about A.D. 1890
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Other Historic Revitalization Movements

• Judaism was created during the Exodus crisis when
  the Jews had to form their society anew after the
  flight form Egypt and Moses brought down the new
  vision from the mountain in the form of the ten
  commandments.
• Christianity evolved in the context of Roman
  oppression of the Jews, with Christ as the
  charismatic leader who reformulated Judaism into
  the Christian philosophy.
• Islam was formulated by Mohammed with elements
  from Judaism, Christianity, and the older
  pantheistic religion of the Arabian peninsula
  (represented by the sacred site of the Kabba).
• Buddhism was formulated out of Hinduism by the
  charismatic leader, the Buddha.
• People with different mazeways can find it
  almost impossible to communicate, so violent
  intercultural conflict is often a feature of
  revitalization movements and emerging religions.

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The Role of Stress

• At individual level (manifestations of malaise,
  underlying causes)
• At group/societal level, when way of seeing the
  world mazeway (system of economics, values,
  etc) falters due to
• marginalization from larger society
• severe privation (food, shelter, etc)
• loss of hope for more mundane solution to
  problems
• leads to family dysfunction and societal
  dysfunction
• forms of resistance weapons of the weak such as
  work slowdowns, mistakes
• Larger societys response
• voluntary or forced acculturation (taking up
  characteristics of mainstream society)
• assimilation (indistinguishability from larger
  society)
• annhiliation (complete eradication of group,
  ethnic cleansing)

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Contemporary Revitalization Movements

• Fundamentalism
• Islamic Jihad
• Charismatic Christianity

Charismatic Christianity among the Roma (Romania)
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Contemporary Social Movements
Examples

• Peace and Justice
• Environment
• How do they differ from Revitalization
  Movements?