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Human came to North America
20,000 yrs. ago
Migrated from Asia by crossing over the Bering Strait (situated between Russia and Alaska)
 Under water now
These first humans formed many tribes
Domestic horses enabled the
Plains Indians to become great hunters of buffalo and other game
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The Lakota is the largest and most influential tribe
Aka Western Sioux
Inhabited western Montana and Wyoming, eastern regions of the Dakotas and parts of
Nebraska
In 1890 more than 200 Lakota were massacred as the result of the war between Indians and whites
Today about 100,000 Lakota live on reservations in
Montana and North and South
Dakota
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 Ultimate reality
 The Lakota name for the supreme reality is Wakan Tanka
 Sometimes translated as Great Spirit/Great Mysterious
 Literally meaning: most sacred
 Wakan Tanka refers to 16 separate deities
 The # 16 is derived from the number 4- 4X4
 4-most sacred #
 Refers to the compass directions: north, south, east, and west
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• Inktomi
• Name means “Spider”
• Mediator between the supernatural and human worlds.
• Taught 1 st humans their ways and customs
• Trickster figure
• Offers moral lessons from experience
• Do not behave as Inktomi
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Belief in Death/Afterlife
 Believe that four souls depart from a person at death
 First soul journeys to the “spirit path” of the Milky Way
 Meets an old woman who judges it and either allows it to continue on to the world of the ancestors
 or it goes back to earth as a ghost
 The other souls enter unborn children to be reborn
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1.
2.
Two main rituals wkst
The Vision Quest
The Sun Dance

 Vision Quest
 Purpose:
 To gain spiritual power and knowledge of one’s role in society
 For success in hunting, warfare, and curing the ill
 Experienced by
 young women and men (more frequently)
 Carried out by
 a spiritual leader: medicine woman or medicine man- they issue specific instructions beforehand, and interpret the content of the vision afterward.
 Expresses 3 dimensions of religion
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Ritual: sweat lodge prior to going out on one’s own
 Experiential: Receiving the vision or guardian spirit
 Mythic: meaning of the guardian spirit
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 Ritual of purification in the sweat lodge
 Procedure
 A dark/airtight hut made of saplings and covered with animal skins
 Represents the universe
 Heated stones placed in the center and water is poured over them by the medicine man
 The resulting hot steam causes the participant to sweat profusely
 Steam room
 Both physical and spiritual purification
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 After purification, the person goes off alone without food, water or shelter for a set # of days
 The vision comes to the person in the form of an animal, other object, or force of nature
 Once the person returns to camp, a medicine man/woman interprets the vision, to determine their role for the rest of his/her life
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Purpose:
 Benefits all
(community ritual)
 Occurs at the beginning of summer as new year celebration
 to prepare for the annual buffalo hunt
Leader:
 A medicine man or woman
Procedure:
1.
2.
Construct a lodge
 Cottonwood tree is selected
 This tree becomes the
Axis Mundi: the axis or center of the universe.
 The tree represents the supreme being
 Connects heaven & earth
 The loge is constructed of
28 poles around the tree: representing the 28 days of lunar month
 The finished lodge is representative of the universe with its four compass directions.
Begin Dance
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The Sun Dance features long periods of dancing
 Dancers dance facing the sun for life- giving powers
 Music and drumbeats accompany the dancing
 Dancers skewer the flesh of their chests and attach themselves to the tree with leather thongs
 Dancers dance pulling back until the skin tears
Purpose of bodily mutilation:
 The body is only thing humans can really call their own
 Therefore, the body is the best sacrifice to offer to the
Supreme Being
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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vioh7ML7
5Cg
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