INTRODUCTION:
One of the largest controversies in the field of Anthropology today is the question over who owns culture. In this paper, I will examine the culturally significant rites and rituals practiced by the indigenous peoples of North America that involve some sort of corporal mortification, and recent controversy about the appropriation of some of these rites and rituals by contemporary countercultural groups, whose members are usually of Anglo descent.
Many cultures contain rites and rituals that utilize the infliction of pain upon their participants in an attempt to elicit an altered state of consciousness, which enable the individuals participating in the ritual to have a type of transcendental or spiritual experience. Pain is only one of the possible avenues to an altered state of consciousness, which can also be brought about by chanting, dancing, fasting, the use of psychoactive substances, and meditation.
EXPOSITION:
The rituals practiced by the Native Americans, although shocking to many Anglo Americans, aren’t anything new in terms of religious ceremony. In fact, using self-mutilation and pain to induce an altered state of consciousness is remarkably common among the world’s religions. Some may be surprised to learn that even the major religions of the world practiced rituals that fall into this category in antiquity, or continue to practice them today.
The Savite and Tamil Nadu Hindu engage in feats of extreme corporal mortification during the Chidi Mari festival in India and Thaipusam and Songkron in Thailand. Certain practitioners of Islam as well as the Sufi in the Middle East inflict pain upon themselves for religious purposes. Tendai Buddhist monks in Japan run continiously for days to reach an altered state of consciousness using the same neurological pathways. Even the Roman Catholic Church used to encourage cloistered monks to engage in self flagellation and even today the Opus Dei sect engages in corporal mortification. (Musafar, 2003)
O-KEE-PA :
The O-kee-pa ceremony was a transition ritual practiced by the Mandan tribe that lived in what is now North Dakota. This ritual was immortalized prior to the tribe’s decimation from foreign diseases, imperial colonialization, and genocide through the works of early ethnographer and artist George Catlin, who wrote: “The degree of physical torture to which some American Indians voluntarily submitted as part of their religious tradition appeared cruel and sanguinary to the few white men who witnessed such rites.” (Catlin, 1967)
The O-kee-pa ceremony, according to Catlin’s description, would take place as an “annual religious ceremony” which “would commence as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown under the bank of the river.” (ibid.) The Mandan would erect a large medicine lodge near the center of their village. This medicine lodge, as well the open commons area of the village, known as the Ark, or “Big Canoe”, would serve as the venue for the yearly ritual.
According to Catlin, the O-kee-pa was “religious worship, with abstinence, with sacrifices, and with prayer, whilst there were three other distinct and ostensible objects for which it was held.” (ibid.) These three things being the calming of the Deluge river, the “bel-lohk-na-pick” or bulldance which was done to call buffalo for the hunting season, and as a transitional or rite-of-passage ceremony for young braves.
The corporal mortification portion of the O-kee-pa ceremony, or the pohk-hong, takes place in the medicine lodge, wherein two individuals armed with knifes and splints await the initiates. When the time comes, these men make deep incisions into initiates and run the splints through the gaps in the flesh the knife creates. These peircings, (located in the breast, shoulder, arm, elbow, and knee) serve as anchors for lengths of rawhide which are used to hoist the initiates into the air, or buffalo skulls to weight the body down. This suspension of the body lasts for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the individuals undergoing the ceremony faint. (ibid.)
After this ceremony, the initiates offer up a finger or two to the Great Spirit, which is cleaved off by a medicine man with a hatchet, using a dried buffalo skull as a cutting board. The initiates are then given over to two athletic braves who pinion themselves together with leather straps and run about the “great canoe” until the splints carrying the buffalo skull weights are ripped free. The initiates are then left “like a mangled corpse” upon the ground until they are able to pick themselves up under their own agency; only after this are they given medical treatment. (ibid.)
SUNDANCE:
The Sun Dance ritual was originally a Lakota Sioux ritual, even though it is now practiced by many Plains Indian Tribes, as well as some Navajo and Ute. It is done to celebrate and represent death and rebirth. Aside from a one year long preparation period, the ritual lasts 28 days, culminating with a 4 day fast for dancers, who on the last day are pierced through their chests, essentially tied to a cottonwood tree. According the Lakota version of the ceremony, the dancers dance free of their piercings, and the torn skin is cut off and laid at the base of the tree as a sacrifice. (Medicine Wolf, date not given.)
“There are many variations on piercing: a dancer can be pierced in the back and have buffalo skulls attached by ropes to the pegs, then he dances aound the circle until the pegs break; a dancer can hang from the cottonwood or a Sundance lodge by his pegs until they break or a person can be pierced both front and back and have the pegs attached to four stakes placed in the four directions.” (ibid.)
According to the Ute, a dancer must receive a vision or dream that “impels him to participate in the ceremony as a dancer.” The aim of the Ute ceremony is for the dancer to attain “medicine power” to use for the good of his tribe and the social networks he belongs to. The Ute Sundance is a tool of social facilitation to instill a youth with the notion that he is responsible for not only himself and his kin, but also for the community at large. (Nuche, date not given.)
Other tribes that have historically partaken in the Sundance ritual are the Mandan, Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboin, Bannock, Blackfeet, Blood, Cheyenne, Plains Cree, Crow, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, Kiowa, Ojibway, Omaha, Ponca, Sarsi, and Shoshone. “Sun dance participants strive to obtain supernatural aid and personal power through their sacrifice…but will bring them a richer and more meaningful life as a member of their society.” (Lawrence, date not given.)
CONTROVERSY:
In 2003 a gathering of the spiritual leaders of the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nation, Cheyenne Nation, and Arapaho Nation decided that there should be no participation in sacred rituals, namely the Sundance, by non-Natives. The religious leaders cited “the abuse and consequences include indecent mockery, mixing of new age beliefs, sale of sacred pipes, use of drugs in and around ceremonies, and charging for ceremonies” as a few of the many variables that influenced their decision. (Norrell, 2003)
According to these spirtitual leaders; “the Sun Dance is for the survival of future generations to come, first and foremost. If non-natives truly understand this purpose, they will also understand this decision and know that by their departure from this Ho-c’o-ka (our sacred altar) is their sincere contribution to the survival of our future generations.” (ibid.)
Despite the fact that several Native American tribes never practiced the Sun Dance traditionally, this ban on outsiders only applies to non-Native Americans because:
“in the early 70’s [Native American spiritual leaders] decided to allow other native nations to participate in these rites. Their reasons were based on the fact that most nations have lost their ways through assimilation or lack of teachers to teach their indigenous ways…They honored and understood the unity of the first nations people when different tribes came to the aid of the Wounded Knee occupation.” (ibid.)
There has been, however, conflict between different tribes living on the same land over the practice of these rituals. In 2001 a group of Navajo women were arrested by Hopi police for trespassing and roadblocks were erected to keep supporters away from Big Mountain, a small Navajo settlement on a Hopi reservation. (Shebala, 2001)
This intentional disrespect for the ceremony most likely stems out of a land dispute on this particular reservation, and the Hopi have tried to use the ceremony and cultural differences between the tribes as a legal reason to have the Navajo evicted from the reservation. (Associated Press, 2001)
Recently these suspension rituals that are held sacred by the Native Americans have been appropriated by individuals like Fakir Musafar, the father and founder of the so-called “modern primitive movement” who engage in pain rituals to try and come to a profound and subjective religious experience. (Musafar, 2004)
Unfortunately, around the same time as Fakir started promoting this type of spirituality, the practice was picked up by two different, more unseemly groups; namely the BDSM (S&M is not longer the politically correct term) fetishist community and another group that wanted to capitalize the shock value of the act by reducing it to little more than a sideshow attraction, a magic trick or a feat of mind-over-matter, a crude facsimile of the sacred rituals and rites practiced for centuries by Native Americans (and others). (ibid.)
THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE:
Taken out of the cultural context, these practices cease to be the rituals practiced by Native Americans, and therefore the main ethical issue is not the use of similar rituals by non-Native Americans, but rather those actions are done for spectacle or crude facsimile, or if the are done in earnest in the pursuit of some sort of subjective spiritual experience. I am a firm believer in the freedom of an individual to pursue truth (be it a higher force, a deeper understanding of themselves, the outside corporeal world or even deities and spirits) through whichever means they so choose. That does not mean that I condone portraying a mock ceremony to illicit shock within an ethnocentric populace, but I don’t see how anyone should be able to tell those shiftless individuals that they can’t do something with their own body.
The truth of the matter is that the rituals themselves may be part of a particular culture within the context of that culture, but outside of that cultural context, they are just behaviors devoid of the significant symbolism that resides within the original ritual. Anyone should be able to try to explore themselves and their spirituality through whichever means they choose, and if that means trying to find truth in another culture’s practices, than they are entitled to search for that truth. As Fakir Musafar said about tattoos, which were appropriated and taken out of their cultural context in the Pacific:
“The meaningful and magical geometric designs of the originators were replaced with the only kind of graphic Europeans understood: crude representational pictures or words…if one borrows a custom from another culture, it is your obligation to respect and understand, as best possible, the significance and mystery of practice…(it) is okay as long as some credit and honor is paid to the people who came before and showed the way- as long as the inner ‘magic’ and ‘sacred space’ belonging to these rituals is not forgotten or ignored.” (Musafar, 2003)
References
Catlin, G. 1967. O-Kee-Pa. American Heritage Magazine. Vol. 18 (6).
Norrell, B. 2003. Plains spiritual leaders issue mandate to protect ceremonies. The Navajo Times. March 20th, 2003.
Shebala, M. 2001. Dispute flares up: Hopi officials, Navajo resisters' views of Sun Dance Incident clash. The Navajo Times. July 19th, 2001.
Atwood Lawrence, E. date not given. The symbolic role of animals in the Plains Indian Sun Dance. Society & Animals. Vol. 1 (1)
Nuche, et al. date not given. The Ute Sundance: Ignacio, Colorado. The Southern Ute Drum.
Medicine Wolf, D. date not given. The Sundance Ceremony. http://www.angelfire.com/co/MedicineWolf/
Author not given. 2001. Sundance ceremony leaves Hopi and Navajo communities bitter. Associated Press. July 17th, 2001.
Musafar, F. 2003. Suspensions & tensions: Yesterday. BMEZINE. November 15th, 2003.
Musafar, F. 2004. Suspensions & tensions: Today. BMEZINE. January 15th, 2004.
