Native American religion
Encyclopedia
Traditional Native American
religions exhibit a great deal of diversity, largely due to the relative isolation of the different tribes that were spread out across the entire breadth of the North American continent for thousands of years, allowing for the evolution of different beliefs and practices between tribes.
Native American religion is closely connected to the land in which Native Americans dwell and the supernatural
. While there are many different Native American religious practices, most address the following areas of supernatural concern: an omnipresent, invisible universal force, pertaining to the "three 'life crises' of birth, puberty, and death", spirits, visions, the shaman and communal ceremony.
Native American spirituality is often characterized by panentheism
, a strong emphasis on the importance of personal spirituality and its inter-connectivity with one's own daily life, and a deep connection between the natural and spiritual 'worlds'.
Native American religions tend not to be institutionalized but rather experiential and personal. This has been a source of a great deal of misunderstanding. Individual asceticism through sweat lodge ceremonies and other events along with rituals that appear to resemble idol worship make understanding their faith and religion problematic at best. Native American religions tend to be carried out mainly in a family or tribal location first and are better explained as more of a process or journey than a religion. It is a relationship experienced between Creator and created. For Native Americans, religion is never separated from one's daily life unlike Western cultures where religion is experienced privately and gradually integrated into one's public life. Conversation about theology and religion, even within their society, is extremely limited but to live and breathe is to worship. For Native Americans, a relationship with God is experienced as a relationship with all of creation which interestingly, is ever present and does not require an institution or building. All of creation has life. Rocks, trees, mountains, and everything that is visible lives and is part of creation and therefore has life which must be respected. Achiel Peelman suggests that, “strictly speaking, Amerindians do not believe in God but know God as an intrinsic dimension of all their relations.” God is known indirectly through an awareness of the relationships or links between various aspects of both the physical and supernatural realms. Spirituality of the Native Americans makes no distinction between these realms; the living and dead, visible and invisible, past and present, and heaven and earth.
Most adherents to traditional American Indian ways do not see their spiritual beliefs and practices as a "religion"; rather, they see their whole culture and social structure as infused with 'spirituality' - an integral part of their lives and culture.
to the native population. Ignoring immense differences in culture in the inhabitants of North America, Europeans linked all the aborigines together as "Indians", denied their right to the soil, and sought to trade with and convert them to whatever brand of Christianity the colonizers espoused. Today, Christianity is the predominant religion in several Native American communities. Generally speaking, these communities are "fundamentalist in theology, conservative in their practice, and often revivalistic and evangelical." Many Native Americans also practice Christianity in combination with another tribal religion.
The Longhouse Religion, founded in 1799 by Seneca Handsome Lake, revitilized Native American religion among the Iroquois. The doctrine of the Longhouse Religion, also called the Handsome Lake Religion is the Gaiwiio, or "Good Word."
Gaiwiio combined elements of Christianity with long-standing Iroquois beliefs. The Longhouse Religion is still practiced by the Iroquois today.
influenced the earlier form, but it is thought to have something to do with the arrival of non-Indians or an epidemic and a prophet with an apocalyptic vision. The Waashat Dance involves seven drummers, a salmon feast, use of eagle and swan feathers and a sacred song sung every seventh day.
used Waashat rituals to start a new religion in the Pacific Northwest
. He declared that he had visited the spirit world and had been sent back to teach his people. He urged a return to the original way of life before white influences and established ceremonial music and dancing. Smohalla claimed that these visions came to him through dreams. His speaking was called Yuyunipitqana for “Shouting Mountain".
, a Squaxin Island member. The name comes from the shaking and twitching motions used by the participants to brush off their sins. The religion combined Christianity
with traditional Indian teachings. This religion is still practiced today in the Indian Shaker Church
.
(Dakota). It spread through the Western Great Lakes region to other Native American tribes such as the Chippewa (Ojibway), Meskwaki (Fox), Kickapoo, Menominee
, Potawatomi
, and Winnebago (Ho-chunk) and the golden hill paugussetts. It was a religious revilatlization movement created to encourage a sense of unity of Native peoples through rituals. These rituals included the playing and keeping sacred drums and the passing of sacred knowledge from tribe to tribe.
. It spread to tribes such as the Achomawi
, Shasta
, and Siletz
, to name a few. It was also known as the "Warm House Dance" among the Pomo. It predicted occurrences similar to those predicted by the Ghost Dance such as the return of ancestors or the world's end. The Earth Lodge Religion impacted the later religious practice, the Dream Dance, belonging to the Klamath and the Modoc.
" is a very general term that encompasses different religious revitalization movements in the Western United States. In 1870, and Ghost Dance was founded by the Paiute
prophet Wodziwob, and in 1889-1890, a Ghost Dance Religion was founded by Wovoka (Jack Wilson), who was also a Northern Paiute. The earliest Ghost Dance heavily influenced religions such as the Earth Lodge, Bole-Maru Religion, and the Dream Dance. The "Ghost Dances" practiced were meant to serve as a connection with "precontact ways of life and honored the dead while predicting their resurrection" (Waldman, 230).
His supposed father, Tavibo, had participated in the Ghost Dance of 1870 and had a similar vision of the Great Spirit of Earth removing all white men, and then of an earthquake removing all human beings. Tavibo's vision concluded that Native Americans would return to live in a restored environment and that only believers in his revelations would be resurrected.
This religion spread to many tribes on reservations in the West, namely the Shoshone
, Arapaho
, Cheyenne
, and Sioux
(Dakota, Lakota, Nakota). In fact, some bands of Sioux were so desperate during wartime for hope that they strengthened their militancy after making a pilgrimage to Nevada in 1889-1890. They provided their own interpretation of the Gospel to their people which emphasized the elimination of white people. A Ghost Dance gathering in December 1890 actually led to the massacre of Sioux, who believed their Ghost Dance Shirts could stop bullets, at Wounded Knee.
, Pomo
, Wintun
, and other tribes of north-central California in the 19th century. Bole is a Wintun word (a Penutian language), maru is a Pomo word (a Hokan language); both refer to the dreams of shamans. They both draw on traditional as well as Christian beliefs and ethical guidelines, with revelations from dreams playing a central role. Some of the dances of this religion were the Bole or Maru dance, the Bole-Hesi Dance, and the Ball Dance. In these dances, dancers wore large headdresses.
williamsii plant (peyote
). Use of peyote for religious purposes is thought to have originated within one of the following tribes: the Carrizo, the Lipan Apache, the Mescalero Apache, the Tonkawa
, the Karankawa
, and the Caddo
, with the Carrizo and the Lipan Apache being the two most likely sources. Since then,despite several efforts to make peyotism illegal, ritual peyote use has spread from the Mexico area to Oklahoma and other western parts of the United States. Notable peyotists include Quannah Parker, the founder of the Native American Church, and Big Moon of the Kiowa
tribe.
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
religions exhibit a great deal of diversity, largely due to the relative isolation of the different tribes that were spread out across the entire breadth of the North American continent for thousands of years, allowing for the evolution of different beliefs and practices between tribes.
Native American religion is closely connected to the land in which Native Americans dwell and the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
. While there are many different Native American religious practices, most address the following areas of supernatural concern: an omnipresent, invisible universal force, pertaining to the "three 'life crises' of birth, puberty, and death", spirits, visions, the shaman and communal ceremony.
Native American spirituality is often characterized by panentheism
Panentheism
Panentheism is a belief system which posits that God exists, interpenetrates every part of nature and timelessly extends beyond it...
, a strong emphasis on the importance of personal spirituality and its inter-connectivity with one's own daily life, and a deep connection between the natural and spiritual 'worlds'.
Native American religions tend not to be institutionalized but rather experiential and personal. This has been a source of a great deal of misunderstanding. Individual asceticism through sweat lodge ceremonies and other events along with rituals that appear to resemble idol worship make understanding their faith and religion problematic at best. Native American religions tend to be carried out mainly in a family or tribal location first and are better explained as more of a process or journey than a religion. It is a relationship experienced between Creator and created. For Native Americans, religion is never separated from one's daily life unlike Western cultures where religion is experienced privately and gradually integrated into one's public life. Conversation about theology and religion, even within their society, is extremely limited but to live and breathe is to worship. For Native Americans, a relationship with God is experienced as a relationship with all of creation which interestingly, is ever present and does not require an institution or building. All of creation has life. Rocks, trees, mountains, and everything that is visible lives and is part of creation and therefore has life which must be respected. Achiel Peelman suggests that, “strictly speaking, Amerindians do not believe in God but know God as an intrinsic dimension of all their relations.” God is known indirectly through an awareness of the relationships or links between various aspects of both the physical and supernatural realms. Spirituality of the Native Americans makes no distinction between these realms; the living and dead, visible and invisible, past and present, and heaven and earth.
Most adherents to traditional American Indian ways do not see their spiritual beliefs and practices as a "religion"; rather, they see their whole culture and social structure as infused with 'spirituality' - an integral part of their lives and culture.
Christianity
The introduction of European civilization to North America brought military conquest, economic pursuits and ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
to the native population. Ignoring immense differences in culture in the inhabitants of North America, Europeans linked all the aborigines together as "Indians", denied their right to the soil, and sought to trade with and convert them to whatever brand of Christianity the colonizers espoused. Today, Christianity is the predominant religion in several Native American communities. Generally speaking, these communities are "fundamentalist in theology, conservative in their practice, and often revivalistic and evangelical." Many Native Americans also practice Christianity in combination with another tribal religion.
Longhouse Religion
Gaiwiio combined elements of Christianity with long-standing Iroquois beliefs. The Longhouse Religion is still practiced by the Iroquois today.
Waashat Religion
The Waashat Religion is also called the Washani Religion, Longhouse Religion, Seven Drum Religion, Sunday Dance Religion, or Prophet Dance and it originates with the Columbia Plateau Indians. It is unclear exactly how it started or when ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
influenced the earlier form, but it is thought to have something to do with the arrival of non-Indians or an epidemic and a prophet with an apocalyptic vision. The Waashat Dance involves seven drummers, a salmon feast, use of eagle and swan feathers and a sacred song sung every seventh day.
Dreamer Religion
The Wanapam Indian SmohallaSmohalla
Smohalla Wanapum nineteenth-century dreamer-prophet associated with the Dreamers movement among Native American people in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia Plateau region.-Biography:...
used Waashat rituals to start a new religion in the Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
. He declared that he had visited the spirit world and had been sent back to teach his people. He urged a return to the original way of life before white influences and established ceremonial music and dancing. Smohalla claimed that these visions came to him through dreams. His speaking was called Yuyunipitqana for “Shouting Mountain".
Indian Shaker Religion
Also known as Tschadam, the Indian Shaker Religion was influenced by the Waashat Religion and was founded by John SlocumJohn Slocum
John Slocum was a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe, Coast Salish, and a reputed holy man and prophet who founded the Indian Shaker Church in 1881....
, a Squaxin Island member. The name comes from the shaking and twitching motions used by the participants to brush off their sins. The religion combined Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
with traditional Indian teachings. This religion is still practiced today in the Indian Shaker Church
Indian Shaker Church
The Indian Shaker Church is a Christian denomination founded in 1881 by Squaxin logger John Slocum in Washington. The Indian Shaker Church is a unique blend of American Indian, Catholic, and Protestant beliefs and practices....
.
Drum Religion
The Drum Religion, also known as the "Big Drum," "Drum Dance," or "Dream Dance," originated around 1890 among the Santee SiouxSioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
(Dakota). It spread through the Western Great Lakes region to other Native American tribes such as the Chippewa (Ojibway), Meskwaki (Fox), Kickapoo, Menominee
Menominee
Some placenames use other spellings, see also Menomonee and Menomonie.The Menominee are a nation of Native Americans living in Wisconsin. The Menominee, along with the Ho-Chunk, are the only tribes that are indigenous to what is now Wisconsin...
, Potawatomi
Potawatomi
The Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...
, and Winnebago (Ho-chunk) and the golden hill paugussetts. It was a religious revilatlization movement created to encourage a sense of unity of Native peoples through rituals. These rituals included the playing and keeping sacred drums and the passing of sacred knowledge from tribe to tribe.
Earth Lodge Religion
The Earth Lodge Religion was founded in northern California and southern Oregon tribes such as the WintunWintun
Wintun is the name generally given to a group of related Native American tribes who live in Northern California, including the Wintu , Nomlaki , and Patwin tribes. Their range is from approximately present-day Lake Shasta to San Francisco Bay, along the western side of the Sacramento River to the...
. It spread to tribes such as the Achomawi
Achomawi
The Achomawi are one of eleven bands of the Pit River tribe of Native Americans who lived in northeastern California, USA....
, Shasta
Shasta (tribe)
The Shasta are an indigenous people of Northern California and Southern Oregon in the United States. They spoke one of the Shastan languages....
, and Siletz
Siletz
Siletz can refer to:*Confederated Tribes of Siletz, a federally recognized tribal entity from the U.S. state of Oregon*Siletz , a nearly extinct tribe of Native Americans from Oregon, now absorbed into the multi-tribal Confederated Tribes of Siletz...
, to name a few. It was also known as the "Warm House Dance" among the Pomo. It predicted occurrences similar to those predicted by the Ghost Dance such as the return of ancestors or the world's end. The Earth Lodge Religion impacted the later religious practice, the Dream Dance, belonging to the Klamath and the Modoc.
Ghost Dances
The "Ghost DanceGhost Dance
The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
" is a very general term that encompasses different religious revitalization movements in the Western United States. In 1870, and Ghost Dance was founded by the Paiute
Paiute
Paiute refers to three closely related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; the Owens Valley Paiute of California and Nevada; and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah.-Origin of name:The origin of...
prophet Wodziwob, and in 1889-1890, a Ghost Dance Religion was founded by Wovoka (Jack Wilson), who was also a Northern Paiute. The earliest Ghost Dance heavily influenced religions such as the Earth Lodge, Bole-Maru Religion, and the Dream Dance. The "Ghost Dances" practiced were meant to serve as a connection with "precontact ways of life and honored the dead while predicting their resurrection" (Waldman, 230).
Ghost Dance Religion
In December 1888, Wovoka (Jack Wilson) of the Northern Paiute(Numu), who was thought to be the son of the medicine man Tavibo (Numu-tibo'o), fell sick with a fever during an eclipse of the sun, which occurred on January 1, 1889. Upon his recovery he made the claim that he had visited the spirit world and the Supreme Being and made the prediction that the world would soon end then be restored to a pure aboriginal state in the presence of the messiah. All Native Americans would inherit this world, including those who were already dead, in order to live eternally without suffering. In order to reach this reality, Wovoka stated that all Native Americans should live honestly, and shun the ways of whites (especially the consumption of alcohol). He called for meditation, prayer, singing, and dancing as an alternative to mourning the dead, for they would soon resurrect. Wovoka's followers saw him as a form of the messiah and he became known as the "Red Man's Christ."His supposed father, Tavibo, had participated in the Ghost Dance of 1870 and had a similar vision of the Great Spirit of Earth removing all white men, and then of an earthquake removing all human beings. Tavibo's vision concluded that Native Americans would return to live in a restored environment and that only believers in his revelations would be resurrected.
This religion spread to many tribes on reservations in the West, namely the Shoshone
Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
, Arapaho
Arapaho
The Arapaho are a tribe of Native Americans historically living on the eastern plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Sioux. Arapaho is an Algonquian language closely related to Gros Ventre, whose people are seen as an early...
, Cheyenne
Cheyenne
Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
, and Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
(Dakota, Lakota, Nakota). In fact, some bands of Sioux were so desperate during wartime for hope that they strengthened their militancy after making a pilgrimage to Nevada in 1889-1890. They provided their own interpretation of the Gospel to their people which emphasized the elimination of white people. A Ghost Dance gathering in December 1890 actually led to the massacre of Sioux, who believed their Ghost Dance Shirts could stop bullets, at Wounded Knee.
Bole-Maru Religion
The Bole-Maru Religion was a religious revitalization movement of the MaiduMaidu
The Maidu are a group of Native Americans who live in Northern California. They reside in the central Sierra Nevada, in the drainage area of the Feather and American Rivers...
, Pomo
Pomo people
The Pomo people are an indigenous peoples of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point...
, Wintun
Wintun
Wintun is the name generally given to a group of related Native American tribes who live in Northern California, including the Wintu , Nomlaki , and Patwin tribes. Their range is from approximately present-day Lake Shasta to San Francisco Bay, along the western side of the Sacramento River to the...
, and other tribes of north-central California in the 19th century. Bole is a Wintun word (a Penutian language), maru is a Pomo word (a Hokan language); both refer to the dreams of shamans. They both draw on traditional as well as Christian beliefs and ethical guidelines, with revelations from dreams playing a central role. Some of the dances of this religion were the Bole or Maru dance, the Bole-Hesi Dance, and the Ball Dance. In these dances, dancers wore large headdresses.
Dream Dance
The Dream Dance, a religious revitalization movement of the Klamath and Modoc, evolved out of the Ghost Dance and Earth Lodge Religion. It involved the power of dreams and visions of the dead. Unlike the Klamath and Modoc religions the Dream Dance did not predict an apocalypse and return of the dead. The religion was only practiced a short time in Oregon in the early 20th century. One of the founders was the Modoc shaman Doctor George.Feather Religion
The Feather Religion was a revitalization movement of the Pacific Northwest. It drew on elements of both the earlier Indian Shaker Religion and the Waashat Religion. The religion was founded in 1904 by Jake Hunt a Klickitat shaman. It is also referred to as the Feather Dance or the Spinning Religion. Sacred eagle feathers were used in ceremonies, one of which involved ritual spinning, hence the name Waskliki for "Spinning Religion."Peyote Religion
The Peyote Religion, also called the "Peyote Cult," "Peyote Road," and the "Peyote Way," is a religious movement involving the ritual use of the LophophoraLophophora
Lophophora is a genus of spineless, button-like cacti native to the southwestern United States through Northeast Mexico and South to Querétaro in central Mexico....
williamsii plant (peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
). Use of peyote for religious purposes is thought to have originated within one of the following tribes: the Carrizo, the Lipan Apache, the Mescalero Apache, the Tonkawa
Tonkawa
The Tickanwa•tic Tribe , better known as the Tonkawa , are a Native American people indigenous to present-day Oklahoma and Texas. They once spoke the now-extinct Tonkawa language believed to have been a language isolate not related to any other indigenous tongues...
, the Karankawa
Karankawa
Karankawa were a group of Native American peoples, now extinct as a tribal group, who played a pivotal part in early Texas history....
, and the Caddo
Caddo
The Caddo Nation is a confederacy of several Southeastern Native American tribes, who traditionally inhabited much of what is now East Texas, northern Louisiana and portions of southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a cohesive tribe with its capital at Binger, Oklahoma...
, with the Carrizo and the Lipan Apache being the two most likely sources. Since then,despite several efforts to make peyotism illegal, ritual peyote use has spread from the Mexico area to Oklahoma and other western parts of the United States. Notable peyotists include Quannah Parker, the founder of the Native American Church, and Big Moon of the Kiowa
Kiowa
The Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
tribe.
American Indian Religious Freedom Act
The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is a United States Federal Law and a joint resolution of Congress that provides protection for tribal culture and traditional religious rights such as access to sacred sites, freedom to worship through traditional ceremony, and use and possession of sacred objects for American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians. It was passed on August 11, 1978.Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub.L. 101-601, 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law passed on 16 November 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding[1] to return Native American cultural items and human remains to their respective peoples. Cultural items include funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.Religious Freedom Restoration Act
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was a congressional reaction to Supreme Court cases that limited the religious freedom of individuals by placing an unnecessary burden on their exercise of religion. The law provided for relief from government burdens on religion with two exceptions. A burden can be placed on the exercise of religion if a compelling government interest is pursued in the least restrictive way possible.See also
- Falls Creek Baptist Conference CenterFalls Creek Baptist Conference CenterFalls Creek Baptist church camp, also known simply as "Falls Creek", is a conference center and youth camp along Falls Creek in the Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma. It is the state's oldest church camp and is also the largest youth encampment in the United States...
- MidewiwinMidewiwinThe Midewiwin or the Grand Medicine Society is a secretive religion of the aboriginal groups of the Maritimes, New England and Great Lakes regions in North America. Its practitioners are called Midew and the practices of Midewiwin referred to as Mide...
- Native American mythologyNative American mythologyNative American mythology is the body of traditional narratives associated with Native American religion from a mythographical perspective. Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons,...
- Religious Rights