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thesis entitled

Eager Anthropologist, Reluctant Sun Dancer: A Partial
Account of Participant Observation Field Experience,

with Symbolic, and Ritual Analysis of Inipi and Piercing,
at the Woptura Medicine Society Sun Dance of 1993

presented by

James D. Stalker

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Master's degnmjn.Anthropology

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EAGER ANTHROPOLOGIST, RELUCTANT SUN DANCER:
A Partial Account of Participant Observation Field
Experience, with Symbolic and Ritual Analysis of Inipi and
Piercing, at Woptura Medicine Society Sun Dance of 1993.

BY
James D. Stalker

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Anthropology

1994

.ABSTRACT

EAGER ANTHROPOLOGIST, RELUCTANT SUN DANCER:
A Partial Account of Participant Observation Field Experience,
with Symbolic and Ritual Analysis of Inipi and Piercing, at

the Woptura Medicine Society Sun Dance of 1993.

BY

James D. Stalker

This thesis is concerned with several aspects of the
continuing tradition of Oglala Sun Dance. An overview of
previous works on this area is presented. Following, is an
elaboration of the development of research methods which lead
to an emphasis on participation. This emphasis made for an
experiential study, drew attention to particular symbolic
effects of ritual, and encouraged a perspective of analysis
that encompasses the body, cognition, and social structures.
Inipi, or sweat lodge, and the piercing activity of Sun Dance
are presented in experiential ethnographic sketches and then
analyzed. It is argued that Sun Dance creates especially
moving non-discursive physical and affective experiences which
lend legitimacy to the ultimate sacred postulate at the core

of Oglala belief and social sense.

This work is dedicated to the Earth and her people.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I must thank most of all my wife, Kristen Lambert, for
her support, encouragement, tolerance, and companionship
during the long journey to the completion of this work. I
also*want to express my appreciation for her family and.my own
as they made my study and writing possible through their help.
I wish to recognize the faculty’ members who made this
possible. From the Department of Anthropology at Michigan
State University, Dr. Hinnant, Dr. Pugh, Dr. McKinley, Dr.
Sauer, Dr. Dwyer, and many others all contributed greatly to
my development and the completion of this thesis. At the
University of Michigan's Department of Anthropology, Dr.
Rappaport. and. Dr. Bierwert. provided. crucial inspiration,
encouragement, and assistance. I owe so much to the people
"in the field" both.Native American and from around the world,
with whom I worked, lived, played, and prayed: Charles Chipps
and his family, Pedro Red Hawk and his family, Red Feather,
Stan, Kim and Ruby Star, Greg, Justice, Katinka, Seth, Nate,
Yoga Paul, Wookie Paul, Virginia, Eileen, Pathfinder JOhn,
Wendy, and so many others -- thank you all. Finally, wopila
to Dan Keto, naturalist, friend, un-paid research assistant,

drummer, singer, and mountain climber.

iv

Table of Cbntents

Introduction p.1
The Chipps Family
All Nations Sun Dancing
How I Became Involved
The Research and the Structure of This
Thesis
Thoughts on Style

1. Review of Literature on Lakota Sun Dance p.13

2. Structuring Structures and Influential
Individuals: The Formation of Fieldmethods p.25
The Summer of 1992
Return to the Academic World
The Structuring Structure of UCRIHS
Influential Individuals
Field Methods Reviewed

3. Theory for Ritual and Symbolic Analysis p.49
Sources and Inspiration for Theory
Ethnographic Considerations

4. Inipi p.68
"Men’s Inipi in Ten Minutes!"

5. Wounds, Scars, and Symbols: The Piercing p.95

Experience

Sun Dance Scars
Piercing Round of the Sun Dance
Wounds, Scars, Symbols

6. Closure p.111
Inipi in Explicit Analysis
Piercing in Explicit Analysis
Scars
History's Warriors and Contemporary Sun
Dancers
Conclusions on Theory
All Nations Dancing: One Answer to "Why?"
Closing This Work

Bibliography p.136

Introduction

This is my Master's Thesis prepared for the Department of
Anthropology of Michigan State University. Accordingly, it is
of appropriate length and scope to demonstrate the necessary
mastery but not an attempt at an academic tour de force. The
research performed in preparation for this work was
exceptionally rich. I struggled to maintain a limited focus
for presentation in this writing for new opportunities for
exposition continually suggest themselves even to this day.
The Chipps Family

The data comes from my participation in and observation
of the Woptura Medicine Society’s Third Annual Ellis Chipps
Memorial Sun Dance held in July of 1993 on the Pine Ridge
Reservation. The Chipps family, Chipps is WOptura in Lakota,
is descended from Horn Chipps, a medicine man close enough to
Crazy Horse to call him "brother." (McGaa, 1992; Neihardt,
1961) The Chipps family has provided several generations of
Yuwipi men. Ellis Chipps, when he was living, was the father
of Charles Chipp's, the Sun Dance Chief and Intercessor.

Charles’ living' brother, Godfrey, carries on the Yuwipi

2
tradition and is known throughout the world as one of the most
powerful living Yuwipi men.(Powers, 1982) Ben, Godfrey's
teenage son, is next in line, but as of this summer was not
sure about his future in relation to Yuwipi.

I should make it clear at this point that I am neither
attempting to construct credibility for myself through this
information nor‘trying'tO‘make'the'Chipps family anything they
are not“ The Chipps family status among medicine societies is
really of no consequence to the authenticity of the Sun Dance
they host, although their history is an important part of the
meaning of that dance. I provide this information as just
that, not to try and impress the reader with my acquaintance
with famous medicine men of the Oglala. I see no reason why
anthropology' on reservations. must confine itself to ‘the
"famous." It was really quite by accident that I became
acquainted with the Chipps - I did not seek them out as a
career move. It was only recently that it began to sink into
my mind just who the Chipps are and were. Still, I value their
integrity as a family on their prayers, ceremonies, actions,
and reputations among those around them, not their pedigree.
Their history only adds to the power of a family living out
their traditions.

All Nations Sun Dancing
The Woptura Medicine Society Sun Dances are unusual in
one notable respect - they are open to participation from

people of "all nations." This means that there is no "racial"

3

discrimination for participants. "White" people can attend
and do from around the world. At the 1993 Sun Dance there
were participants‘ from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and
Australia. The Chipps, like many other medicine men, travel
around the world to provide their services and teachings” The
participation of "white" people in the Sun Dance is
problematic. While a member of the American Indian Movement
did participate, others criticized the Dance from outside as
the "selling of Medicine."

I was sensitive to this charge and thought at length
about the legitimacy of this Dance. Participants do make
contribution to Charles as well as Unci, Grandma Chipps.
However, there is no expressed, fixed, price and participants
are free to contribute what they can and how they want.
Compensating the Sun Dance Intercessor is a tradition as old
as the Dance itself. (See Dorsey, 1890) Since it is difficult
to provide traditional gifts of buffalo products, (skins,
robes, meat, and the like), cash is an easy substitute. For
my part, I paid the Chipps’ rather large electric bill.
Others paid the phone bill. Some paid cash. All members of
the Sun Dance community this summer contributed ten dollars
each to a fund that went to buy Charles a much needed new,
used car, an early model Lincoln Continental big enough for

his whole, large family.

 

1 "participant" refers to the people who came to, watched,
and/or helped make the Dance happen. "Sun Dancers" are people who
actually participated inside the Arbor by Dancing.

4

Another outside criticism was that the "white" people,
assumed to be hippies and flakes, were profaning a sacred
tradition. .All I can say about this is that the Sun Dance was
performed in earnest and was more traditional than any of the
Dances recorded in the literature of the previous two decades.
I met "white" people who were devote practitioners of a
contemporary Lakota based spiritual complex. Many "white"
people follow traditional Lakota.ways*with more integrity than
some of the "red" people on the Reservation. This is not an
accusation or a judgement, but simply an observation. In the
twilight of the twentieth century, Oglala religion has moved
off the reservation and has found life in former, or still
practicing, Christians, Jews, agnostics, Buddhists, Krisnas,
and self made spiritualists.

This brings us to a final criticism of open Dances, one
I partly share. There is a strong danger that "white" folks
may push the Native Americans out of their own tradition. iRed
Feather, Charles' main helper, voiced this concern at another
Dance I attended in the Midwest. It is a legitimate concern.
While I think it would be impossible for this to happen at
Crow Dog’s Dance on Rose Bud, or at many of the smaller Dances
on reservations, it is the case that there are more "white"
people at the Chipps Dances than "red" people. This is due,
in the case of the Chipps, to a number of factors. For one,
it has "always" been a Chipps' tradition to extend the Lakota

rituals and spirituality to "all nations." As this offends

5
many Native Americans they shun the Chipps as other people
accept the invitation. Off the reservation it is crucial that
Native Americans be involved in Sun Dance, other than in
merely token positions: however, this is easier said.thanidone
in today’s political climate. Co-operation between "white"
and Native Americans is not impossible, but often awkward. By
no means is "white" participation in the Sun Dance an easy
issue to address or resolve. It is an issue all of us
involved with Sun Dance and Native American communities will
have to face with understanding, patience, and humility. I
wish I had more space to address the issue. For my purposes
here it must be enough to open the debate and leave it where
I have. The open nature of the Dance does have other
implications for this work as I will detail later, especially

when it comes to anthropological theory.

How I Became Involved

I feel I should explain why this Sun Dance became the
subject of research. I do not come to this project as a
committed "Native Americanist" but rather as someone
interested in religion, ritual, and symbolism who found an
excellent opportunity for analysis. In the spring of 1992, I
broke my right collar bone as a result of a nasty crash in the
quest for "big air" on my mountain bike. I broke it in two
places just two weeks before my wife, Kristen, and I were

supposed to join my parents in Turkey where my father was

6
working for Fulbright. A week of sedatives, ibuprofin, and
CNN put me in sufficient shape for a nightmarish plane flight
to Ankara. I still think that the pain of knowing I had
ruined.Kristen’s tripiwas worse than the pain of broken bones.
I was a poor travelling partner. I had originally planned on
staying on in Turkey in an effort to look for research
opportunities in that country. I was all too happy, however,
to return home. Dysentery, Turkish toilets, pollution, and
language barriers, combined with my still un-knitted bone to
drive me home after a brief but wonderful two weeks. Upon
returning we discovered that Kristen's classes had all been
cancelled and she had already missed a week of a short term.
I could not work yet, being unable to use my right arm for
much at all. The whole summer fell to pieces. At the local
food co-op, just down the street from our house in Lansing,
Kristen met an acquaintance from her work at the next door
bakery and.vegetarian restaurant, Kim. ZKristen and.I had been
talking about crossing the country by car to interview some
graduate schools and go down into Mexico now that I could
share the driving. Kim and Kristen talked about summer plans
and in conversation Kim mentioned that she was looking for a
ride to South Dakota and then Oregon. She was going to Sun
Dances. She even extended an invitation for us to join her as
supporters at the Dances. I had only a scant knowledge of the
Sun. Dance, mostly' through. ZMarriott’s excellent. Ten

Grandmothers: Epic of the.Kiowas, (1945). However, as an avid

7
student of religion, ritual, and symbolism, I was eager to
have the chance to be a part of what I knew to be a
fundamental ceremony on a reservation. After meeting with Kim
a few times, we decided that we would all be happy with the
arrangement, despite Ihaving' tot cram, four people, (Kim’s
daughter, Ruby Star does the Dance as well), in a Pontiac
Grand Am for a five thousand mile trip. That first year
provided me with an introduction to many wonderful people
including Charles, Unci, and a man named Stan from Vermont who
became a key in my understanding and participation in the
dance. I was introduced to a whole community of people from
my area and around the world. This past year, I was almost
reluctant to subject my friends, and a few near enemies, to

study.

The Research and Structure of This Thesis-

This thesis begins with a survey of some of the
anthropological literature available on the Sun Dance. This
little project itself suggests a number of fascinating routes
for analysis and later comparison, It is‘with reluctance that
I postpone these projects for a latter work. The purpose of
the survey is several fold. First, this thesis assumes a
basic knowledge of Lakota Sun Dance tradition on the part of
reader. The survey provides options for background reading
ranging from brief but informative articles to lengthy

ethnographies. Through the survey the reader should be able to

8
make informed choices for further reading. The second purpose
is to demonstrate my background in the area of the Sun Dance.
The review also shows the reader what reading, specific to
Oglala Sun Dance, I have done in preparation for this thesis.
Finally, the review shows some of the methodological and
analytical theories operating previous to my own as well as
providing some interesting background information. There is a
general trend in the literature from reliance on interviews
about the Sun Dance, to observation of actual Dances, to my
own full participation in the Sun Dance. There is also a
great deal of variation in description of the Sun Dance within
the overall structural similarity. I bring out a few points
that are of interest to the purposes of this thesis and its
theoretical focus on the body.

The intent of my research was basic: learn what the
people who are at the dance think I need to know and whatever
else I can find out. My methodology is described in the
second chapter. As will be seen, my methods were a complex
mixture of previous training, University requirements, and
conditions of the environment for researchn 'The result was my
full participation in the Sun Dance, a very deep and rich
experience yielding personal and professional results far
beyond what I expected from the project.

I wish to note with some regret that this work has as it
focus a decidedly male perspective of the Sun Dance. Women

are involved in Sun Dance and do even Dance for up to four

9

days. A few‘women even pierce although usually not as deep or
through the chest, rather on the arms. The direction my
research took placed me largely in a postion to understand the
male experience because of my own gender and involvement as
well as the segregation of sexes that is a Lakota tradition.
By no means is my omission of women in this work a political
act or an oversight. It is rather a result of many forces
outside of my control as will be seen as I explain the
development of my methods.

In the third chapter I present the theory with which I
analyze two specific domains of my Sun Dance data. While I
would love to present an ethnography of the Sun Dance as a
whole, it would easily extend beyond four hundred pages. In
using this data for a task appropriate to the expected length
of a.master's thesis, I must narrow the scope of analysis. It
is with this intent that I concern myself with the very
fruitful area of the human body and its crucial involvement in
the symbolic action of ritual. The Sun Dance itself suggested
this line of investigation to me as well as the lectures and
writings of Dr. Rappaport at the University of Michigan where
I attended classes the spring before my research in 1993. Dr.
Rappaport’s thinking on the numinous and nondiscursive aspects
of religion will be combined with his ideas on the body as
symbolic locus for meaning. Upon returning from the field I
read Bourdieu’s Logic of Practice for a class at Michigan

State University. In this work I found again an emphasis on

10

the human body that combined well with Rappaport’s work to
make an excellent tool of analysis. I also use Sperber's
thinking on symbolism to help explain some of the variation in
individual enculturation that is unique to All Nations Sun
Dancing. Together, in Chapter Three, these authors form the
foundation of my framework for an ethnographic analysis of two
parts of the 1993 Woptura Sun Dance.

These two areas of the Sun Dance very much involve the
body. The first area of the Dance that I analyze is the
inipi, the sweat lodge. This will be the subject of Chapter
Four. It is in inipi that fundamental concepts are taught and
relearned both verbally and through the physical experience of
suffering, endurance, and numinousness. The lodges are the
place where skills needed to perform well in the dance are
communicated to the dancers.

From the inipi it is logical to move on to the Wiwanyang
Wacipi, the Sun Dance, in Chapter Five. I will not present
the whole dance, for as I mentioned this would be a long task
beyond the bounds of this thesis. What I will present are
elements of the Dance particularly germane to the framework.of
analysis focusing on the body set up in Chapter Three. While
many authors shy away from the ”torture" aspects of the Dance,
I will concern myself at length with the experience of
piercing. I will also briefly consider other aspects of the
dance involving the body such as fasting, thirst, circular

movement, gazing at the sun and tree, exposure to the

11
elements, and blowing the eagle bone whistle. These
components of the dance, or "variables" as Jorgensen (1972)
calls them, all focus on the body as medium for symbolic
communication. The result is a profoundly successful and
motivating inscription of information upon the individual that
binds him, or her, to the common beliefs of the community
while maintaining a powerful existential meaning that

validates those social systems.

Thoughts on Style

I made a effort in writing this work to preserve as much
of the aesthetic qualities of the Sun Dance as possible. 'This
thesis contains highly experiential ethnographic information
as a result of the nature of the reseach. At the same time,
it subjects this information to a very alien scrutiny in the
form of anthropolgical theory. For me, this creates a tension
that may or may not be obvious to the reader. On one hand, I
deeply respect the faith and belief in Lakota ways that the
people around me held during my field.work, On the other hand
I subject that faith to scientific scrutiny which denies
itself belief in Native systems. This very problem was
embodied in myself during my participation. It is a problem
only overcome here by expressing the tension between the two
systems.

This work is substantially autobiographical and fits in

12
the genere of "field work stories" to some extent. Again, I
had only a limited amount of choice in this matter. To be
honest in disclosing the sources and nature of my data
requires a healthy autobiograhical content. Further, I feel
it necessary to show the develpment of my position in the
field, since it was only partly of my own making, but made
this thesis. I did not set out to write this thesis in this
way - it probably would have been much more boring! Despite
the way things turned out, I have done the best I could and
have tried to‘ embrace both the expostion of ethnographic
information and the theory with enthusiasm and inspiration.
Above all, being a writer before an anthropologist, I wish
this text to be interesting and engaging reading despite its
heavy academic content. Please laugh, cry, recoil, wonder,

ponder, and above all enjoy.

Chapter One:

Review of Literature on Lakota SUn Dance

In writing this thesis I assume, on the part of the
reader, a certain knowledge of the Oglala Sun Dance tradition.
To keep this work an appropriate length and to meet the goal
of presenting an ethnographic analysis, it is necessary to
only briefly review some of the available literature on the
Lakota Sun Dance. What information that comes from this
review will help to provide context for the Dance studied for
this work. I also present this overview for the purposes of
demonstrating what sort of information is available on Sun
Dance and what I, as a researcher, used in preparation for
this thesis. There is not space here to present summaries of
the works reviewed. I will instead give a few lines of
introduction and, if necessary, detail contributions that are
specifically germane to the construction of this thesis. This
overview is also not intended to be exhaustive. I am certain
that there are texts that are difficult to get hold of or are
not so widely known that escaped my attention. A few I have

simply left out for they are brief and draw on sources cited

13

14
here. I am pleased to offer a good balance of Native American
and academic American works. Major efforts have been made,
where the Oglala Sun Dance is concerned, to give Oglalas a
chance to express their traditions in their own voice. The
sources that I review are: Mails, Lewis, Jorgensen, Amiotte,
McGaa, Dorsey, Walker, Spier, and Black Elk.

I begin with Mails' Sun Dancing at Rosebud and Pine
Ridge, because it is a rather recent and very informative
work, lMails provides a great deal of information about dances
intercessed by Eagle Feather on Rose Bud reservation in 1974
and 1975u He gives detailed. accounts of preparations,
rituals, and each day of both dances. An amazing number of
photographs and original paintings by the author provide a
rare visual complement to the ethnographic data. Mails also
allows participants to provide their own accounts of the
dances in written contributions to the text. This is a
commendable addition to ethnography that I wish I had the
resources to provide in my own. Mails observed the dances
himself and even went so far as to participate through
supporting them. He does mention that he stayed at a motel in
Mission during the Dances and thus, I expect that he missed
some of the daily experience of the Dance. His position,
despite his enthusiasm for the ceremony, seems to remain one
of professional observer not immersed in the urgency of
practice. Further, Mails, due to his own strongly Christian

background, seems all too willing to leave Wakan Tanka and

15

other spiritual terms and operations locked solidly into their
Christian glosses of Almighty God and the like. While I too
experienced the syncretized modernity of contemporary Sun
Dance on a highly missionized reservation, there were aspects
of the spiritual content that did go beyond simple Christian
equivalencies. This could have been the case at the Dance
Mails observed, and he was just.t0‘willing to leave the matter
unexamined - perhaps not. Another aspect of the ethnography
that is interesting to me is the short duration of the Dance
day and the lack of fasting. By Mails account, the Dances
involved four half days and a large lunch was provided. In
contrast, the Dance I participated in was nearly dawn to dusk
with no food or water for four days. A powwow followed the
half day of dancing in Mails - another contrast with my own
experience. This information is very valuable, however.
Mails supports his own work with quotes from Dorsey, which is
reviewed below, and Densmore. I found enough of Densmore in
Mails and was not inspired to read more. Generally, Mails'
ethnography is of high quality and meets most of the
expectations and needs of a contemporary student. It is
certainly possible to gain a solid understanding of the Sun
Dance, especially its revival period, from Sundancing at
Rosebud and Pine Ridge.

Lewis, in The Medicine Men, describes the same era of Sun
Dances as Mails. His account focuses more on the social

dancing that follows the rather anemic and perfunctory

l6

"sacred" part of the Dance. His contribution is interesting
especially the detail about a Sun Dance that was forced to
Crow Dog's on Rose Bud by police pressure and arrest warrants
because it lacked Tribal authorization. Lewis helps put the
1960-1970's era of Dances into perspective in a way that is
missed by Mails’s concentration on their sanctity. Lewis also
provides a good bibliography for the Sun Dance which includes
authors I do not cover here: Fletcher, (1883): Schwatka,
(1890): Nurge, (1970): Zimerly, (1969); and Lewis, (1972).

Another rather recent work on the Sun Dance is
Jorgensen's The Sun Dance Religion, (1972). Jorgensen has a
very interesting and modern approach to the Sun Dance. I
should first. make clear, however, that he is primarily
concerned with Ute and Shoshone Dances which are notably
different from Oglala tradition. He focuses on the
political/economic aspects of the Sun Dance for these groups.
He presents excellent data on the conditions of reservation
life in terms of industrial mass society. This is something
outside the scope of my research and analysis. He then uses
this data to interpret the meaning of the Sun Dance, along
with other more traditional interpretive tools. His
description of the dance, and the problematics of white
involvement, are excellent. His use of statistical analysis
of "variables" of various stages of the Dance seems bizarre
and does not provide much meaning for me. Still, Jorgensen’s

work is worthy reading even for the student of Oglala

17

tradition. Political and economic aspects of the Sun Dance
would certainly be a part of any future large scale analysis
of the Sun Dance on my part but is too cumbersome to attempt
in this short work.

Amiotte gives valuable information in his short article,
a contribution to Sioux Indian Religion, (1987), a volume
edited by DeMallie. Amiotte also provides the wonderful
illustrations for the book. Amiotte’s paper is a
presentation, in Native American voice, of contemporary Sun
Dance. He describes the preparation involved in current
dances, the dance itself, and some of the cosmological notions
at work. He also notes differences between tradition and
current practice. In the opening paragraphs he provides an
important historical understanding of the changes in forms of
Sun Dance during revival:

Beginning as early as 1924, and
developing especially during the 1960's and
seventies, we had the revival of the ceremony
proper, gradually moving out of its
transitional phase where it was part powwow
and part Sun Dance and part annual fair. We
have seen a renaissance take place recently in
which the Sun Dance was returned to its
formal, intensely sacred character, with many
of the same restrictions and dimensions that
it had in its historical setting. (Amiotte,

1987.)

The Sun Dances that Amiotte refers to here recall the Sun
Dances described by Mails where easy half days were combined
with powwows. Amiotte also seems to refer to a type of Sun

Dance like the Chipps' dances. They do not have powwows and

are extremely traditional in restrictions and sanctity, as

18

Amiotte alludes to, while being open to all nations. Amiotte
does not address open dances and in fact there is no record of
open dances to my knowledge. Thus, following Amiotte we can
type the Dances found in Mails as transitional, with the Dance
I present being something beyond the ceremony proper in its
renaissance phase. I found Amiotte’s thoughts on cosmology
interesting but they did not correspond to anything in my
experience. His article is a good, short, introductory text
although it is not comprehensive enough to stand on its own as
the detail of the description of Sun Dance is insufficient.

Ed McGaa, Eagle Man, an Oglala Sioux, provides a
brilliant description of Sun Dance from his own personal
experience following his return from combat flying in the
Vietnam War in Chapter Ten of his Mother Earth Spirituality.
He describes with poignancy the struggle he, Fools Crow, Lame
Deer, Eagle Feather, and others went through to resist the
Missionaries' attempts to suppress the revival of the dance.
Eagle Feather and Lame Deer are key men in Mails ethnography
which is probably from a few years later date than the Dance
in which Eagle Man defied a missionary. McGaa's description
of the Dance includes affective and spiritual content largely
absent in many other ethnographies. Also notable is that the
Dances in which he participated included powwow. He does not
mention fasting or thirst, but piercing was a part of his
Dancing after the first year. Mother Earth Spirituality is a

well written book for a popular audience that should be

19
mandatory reading on the contemporary Oglala Sun Dance.

This brings us to the classic works on historical Sun
Dance from around the time of forced reservation settlement.
Dorsey’s writing for the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology is
a classic reference for the student of the Sun Dance. His
understanding of the Sun Dance is detailed, although it seems
to be based upon interviews rather than observation - the
methodology is not clear. There are, however, some clues to
Dorsey's orientation to the Sun Dance:

In the summer of 1873, when the author

was a missionary to the Ponka in what was Todd

County, Dakota, that tribe had a sun dance on

the prairie near the mission house. The

scarifications and subsequent tortures and

dancing lasted but three hours instead of a

longer period, owing to the remonstrances of

Bishop Hare, the agent, and the Missionary...

For obvious reasons the author did not view

the sun dance but he was told about it by some

of the spectators. (Dorsey, 1890.)

To me it is not immediately obvious why he would not go
unless it is because it offended his Christian sensibilities.
This is quite a contrast to Mails, who is a Missionary quite
supportive of the Sun Dance. (It is amusing that it was
Bishop Hare, from the East, who broke up the dance considering
Hare's role as a trickster in much Woodland Native American
mythology. (Radin, 1956) Mails and Dorsey also disagree about
the meaning of Wakanta or Wakan Tanka. Dorsey finds that it
is not even close to God as there are too many "beings" within

it, while Mails accepts the equivalence. This change over

time would be an interesting area of analysis were I to have

20

space to address it. A very interesting detail that comes
from Dorsey is his mention of piercing to a tree or dragging
buffalo skulls independent of the Sun Dance. Apparently, at
this time, these components of the Dance were also practiced
alone for purposes of obtaining a vision or guidance.
Finally, Dorsey's ethnography, drawn from other sources as
well as his own research, shows a much more war oriented Sun
Dance than is found in contemporary accounts and my own
research. Warrior societies are active in Dorsey's report, as
is the killing of the "enemy tree," eventually the Tree of
Life, and the mock capture of Sun Dance pledgers before they
are pierced. These elements are all absent in contemporary
Sun Dance as recorded here and elsewhere. (McGaa, 1989;
Amiotte, 1987; Mails, 1978) The warrior theme seems to have
faded to allow other themes to be emphasized as I‘will discuss
later; Dorsey’s work is very detailed, although somewhat.dry,
and is a very useful look back at the tradition of the Sun
Dance, prior to its return in full form in the past two or
three decades.

Walker, provides a similar historical view in his
Anthropological Paper prepared for the American Museum of
Natural History, in the early 1920's based on research
conducted earlier. There is a great deal of similarity
between the content of Walker's ethnography and Dorsey’s.
However, one gets the idea, given that Walker admits to having

become a shaman, that his attitude toward the Sun Dance would

21
have been more open minded than Dorsey’s. Further, Walker’s
methods and work were highly regarded by Wissler, a protege of
Boas, and thus we can assume that Walker did not share
Dorsey’s cultural evolutionist tendencies and was much more of
a cultural relativist. Walker does not say that he observed
a Dance, and it is assumed that Agents and Missionaries,
sharing the sentiment of revulsion toward the ritual that
leaks through the objective tone of Dorsey’s prose, had driven
the Dance underground if not into temporary abandonment.
Walker's account of the Sun Dance is through interview. It is
likely that the Sun Dances remembered by Walker's informants,
are of the same era of Sun Dances described as practiced in
Dorsey; The emphasis on.warrior drama is similar from felling
the Tree of Life to the drama surrounding the piercing of
participants. Walker does find that Wakan Tanka has taken on
the meaning of "the Christian's God - Jehovah." Again a
potentially intriguing area for comparison. In Walker's
account, the Dance proper seems to last only one day while
there are still four days of preparation. Perhaps this is a
distortion caused by interviewing as opposed to observation.
Walker does provide an enormous amount of information. He is
a model salvage ethnographer. For this reason I highly
recommend Walker as a historical source for Sun Dance. Also,
Walker follows his own report with written pieces from several
Lakota on a variety of subjects. In.Lakota Society, a writing

specifically on the Sun Dance is provided by High Bear. It is

22
short but interesting. Walker's work could stand on its own
although it would be well combined with one or more of the
contemporary sources above.

Following Walker's report, in the same volume, is a
comparative work by Spier on the entire Plains wide tradition
of Sun Dance. I review it here because it is a good source
for understanding all the variants that can still be subsumed
under the category of Sun Dance. Notably unique to the Lakota
is the heavy emphasis on piercing. According to Spier, an
Oglala Sun Dance is the only Sun Dance where piercing is
nearly mandatory. I have heard of dancers not piercing but
have never seen it. It is to this day, at least in Dances
where Charles or Red Feather is involved, a rarity. Spier
also contains excellent summarization of the long tradition in
his attempt to reduce the Sun Dance to a series of components
that are then used for statistical analysis. The work in some
ways is similar to.Jorgensen and.his "variables" that are used
to understand variation. Spier's effort is one of attempting
to identify the original sources and direction of diffusion of
the Sun Dance tradition. The information content on
components of ritual is rewarding although the work offers
little on Lakota tradition in terms of process.

Another classic text for students of the Sun Dance is
found in Chapter Five of The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account
of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Black Elk, through

Joseph Epes Brown, gives an incredibly detailed remembrance of

23
the "original" Sun Dance. While the text is probably not an
account of an "actual" Dance, it does appear to be a mythical
model, an oral history prototype for traditional Sun Dance as
practiced before, and during, Black Elk’s time. As an origin
story it is incredibly rich and rewarding to read. Black Elk
narrates a large number of prayers in the story that give an
invaluable sense of the motivation and meaning of the Sun
Dance for the people. .Aigood companion text for any Black Elk
reading is Julian.Rice's Black.Elk’S’Storyy a critical look at
Niedhart's construction of Black Elk's teachings as well as
the life of Black Elk as a Christian and a Sioux Medicine Man.
Black.Elk's teachings, perhaps the most popular of all "Lakota
writings," are still required reading for understanding the
Sun Dance, especially when balanced with a little post modern
reflection as provided by Rice.

These texts were all chosen because of their focus on Sun
Dance, mostly Oglala or Lakota. In preparing for this thesis
I also read a large number of works concerned with the Lakota
culture in general and its history. However, reviewing just
the texts specific to Sun Dance has consumed nearly ten
percent of this thesis. Detailing more general background
reading would be twice as time consuming. What should be
taken from this chapter is the availability and content of
some of the work on the Sun Dance for the reader who needs
more background data than is given in this thesis. Also, the

notable aspects of each book should give the reader familiar

24
with the Sun dance an idea of some of the general
characteristics of the one I present here. Finally, the
reader should have an idea of what kind of home work was done
in preparation for this writing; Certainly, I have managed to
overlook some source here and there, most likely an obscure
one not available at the Michigan State University Library or
not appearing in the bibliographies of the sources cited. 'The
impact of these readings will show itself here and there

throughout the remainder of this work.

Chapter TUo:
Structuring Structures and Influential Individuals - The

formation of field methods

My methods were formed in what can be divided into a
three step process that took place over the course of a year
from the summer of 1992 through the summer of 1993. The first
step*was initial exposure to the field conditions in 1992. It
was here that I evaluated the possibilities for fieldwork
procedures and anthropological position. The second step was
the formalization, legalization, and bureaucratization of the
methods as a result of submission of research proposals and
methodology to Michigan State University's University Council
on Research Involving Human Subjects, known from this point on
as UCRIHS. This process, my first exposure to the realities
of "official research," had the effect of altering my initial
intent for methods as well as redefining my internal notions
of the anthropological position in the field. The third step
in the formulation of methodology occurred in the field as a
result of UCRIHS requirements, my own attempts at research,

and the authority of Charles Chipps, the Sun Dance Chief.

25

26

I think that it is best to describe my methodology
within its own terms and this requires presenting it as the
process that it was. I present the forming of my methods in
a.more or less chronological order with some occasional "play"
with time to promote clarity and economy of narrative. The
chronology begins with my preliminary field experience in
1992. I then discuss the academic basis for my methods,
inspired by anthropological practice theory and sensitivity to
the field conditions. After this, I return to the narrative
and explain how both UCRIHS and Charles Chipps structured my
methods. In the end, it was these three factors, my academic
background, the institutional requirements of UCRIHS, and
Charles Chipps, that lead to what I find to be a logical
extension of practice theory resulting in novel data recovery
from participant observation. With the development of methods
narrated and the final methods explicated, I continue in
chronology to review this method in terms of Bourdieu’s The
Logic of Practice, an influential work I read upon returning
from the field. This evaluation of methodology allows me to
place the methods that I used in a firm theoretical context
and address their intensely participatory aspect with some

critical attention.

The Summer of 1992
I begin, before any formal field work, in the Great

Plains, at the first Sun Dance I attended simply as a

27
supporter of two Sun Dancers, Kim R. and Stan C.. Since I was
only a first year graduate student, I could not really call
myself an "anthropologist" in any credentialed sense of the
word. Further, given the unfavorable reputation of
anthropologist on the Reservation and the general dislike
among the members of the Sun Dance community of the idea of
being "studied," I quickly realized that the best position was
just to be like everyone else. As I mentioned in the
introduction, this Dance was an All Nations event and thus, a
"white boy"1 with no previous experience in Sun Dance was not
unusual. It was assumed that I came there to learn, which was
true, and so I was taught. A role for me to fit into was
already present - "first year at a Dance." "Anthropologist"2
was not a role available to me without considerable effort of
negotiation with elders and the potential for getting myself
asked to leave or at least so fully removed from day to day
events and social interaction as to make investigation
fruitless. So I humbled myself to be what I really was and
for the most part did what I was expected to do. My position

eliminated the possibility of public note taking, but also

 

’- While my skin color fits the popular American "racial"
category'of "white," my genetic, ethnic, and social background
is severely distorted by this oversimplification.

’ I place these "roles" in quotes to emphasize that this
is an artificial formalization of an individual identity
easily recognized by the group but full of the varieties of
expression and exercise unique to the individual who can be
identified by that "role." "Roles" are not rule bound but do
contain some heuristic value.

28

removed with it the stigma associated with that practice and
the break in natural social flow caused by obvious
observation. I also discovered, among other things, that one
could learn more about inipi ceremony, the sweat lodge, from
the inside than the outside. Much more is gained in the
initial stages of research from being involved and taking
notes later in one’s tent, than taking notes during the event
and being too removed to really experience the ritual.

I left Pine Ridge, and a second Dance in Oregon, with
among other things, a general practical knowledge of Sun Dance
as Charles Chipps was involved in it in 1992, a great deal of
exposure to the varieties of sweat lodge ceremony, and a firm
grasp of the possibilities for anthropological position for
the next year’s thesis research. "Anthropologist" would have
to be subordinated to "Sun Dance supporter" and the
obligations and experiences appropriate to a second year
participant in the events that year brings” There was promise
of enormous potential for interesting data suggesting ideas

for analysis even at this early stage.

Return to the Academic WOrld

When I returned to academic study the following fall,
1992, it became apparent. that, academically’ as well as
practically, a minimum of anthropological intrusion into

practice accompanied. by' a ‘willing and, co-operative

29
participation in events was an excellent opportunity. It fit
in perfectly with a practice model for ethnography and would
yield a depth of information suitable for considerable
original analysis in the field of the Sun Dance.

I began, in preparation of field work and as part of my
required course work, formal study of "praxis" or "practice"
ethnography. I had been exposed to a number of practice
ethnographies before without ever really having the theory
behind them made explicit for me. One of the features of
anthropology that. most. attracted :me as an ‘undergraduate
student was the participant-observation method and
ethnographies that focused on this experience and the data
that came from that focus. Within this frame I have always
been impressed with the results of those anthropologists who,
in the narrative of their field work, appear to
enthusiastically but respectfully embrace the culture that was
the object of their study.

Some of exemplary works that I have found most intriguing
in anthropology partially involve hallucinogens as in
Taussig's Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man, or
Myerhoff’s Peyote Hunt. Somehow, mind altering substances
seem to lend legitimacy to the fullest possible
anthropological immersion in the subject culture. There are
no drugs in my work but there is complete participation in
ritual on the part of the researcher modeled after these and

other ethnographies. What also impressed me about these

30

works, and others, is the formation of friendships and the
willingness on the part of the investigators to be restrained
in letting their informants teach as much as they themselves
actively seek to learn. In neither of these cases does the
anthropologist in turn claim to represent, as an individual,
the culture that they study. There is no conversion despite
heavy involvement in mind altering and personally meaningful
experiences.

Few' authors, that. I am familiar’ with, specifically
disclose their methodology for fieldwork. The emphasis seems
always to fall on analytical theory and that is used to
explain methods in many cases. Just as often the author
describes how the field experience suggests the theory of
analysis they are about to preSent and the methods that they
use to achieve this are pieced together in the narrative.
However, methods can be inferred from the presentation of data
within the text of some works such as in the two mentioned
above, Seremetakis’s The Last Word, or Wikan's Managing
Turbulent Hearts. In both these later works the
anthropologist seems to have placed herself as deeply as
possible within the flow of events and the urgency of life

lived by the natives’. None of these authors seems to feel

 

3 The term "native" is perhaps offensive to some readers
and seems to have taken on pejorative connotations in some
circles. Bourdieu, (Bourdieu, 1990) often puts the term in
quotes. I use the term with the full respect cultural
relativism extends to people born and living in other places
and cultures. Native, to me means the equivalent of
"inhabitant" but with deeper ties to place and culture.

31
as if his or her "objectivity" was threatened by intense,
personally meaningful involvement, nor do they appear to have
"gone native" despite participating as fully as possible in
native practice.

Gleaning methodology from ethnography was crucial
to the formation of my method and is as far as I had gotten in
my methodology by the time I left for the field. However, it
is not possible, in the scope of this essay to present clues
to my methods through ethnographic exposition. A more direct,
autobiographical ethnography of method is used, as I wish to
give maximum space for symbolic and ritual analysis. Also, I
would like a more solid theoretical foundation for presenting
my methods than is possible in a review of ethnography; a
methodology derived from theory but isolated from the field
experience. It is also important to note that "going native,"
or' maximum immersion. in. practice, has its philosophical
critics in anthropology. However, before these academic
considerations are taken up, the effects of two other factors
in the construction of my method, UCRIHS and Charles Chipps,

are show in narration.

The Structuring Structure of UCRIHS: Spring, 1993

We return to the chronology a few months before my
departure for research in the summer of 1993. Preparing a
research project proposal for UCRIHS was a cold awakening to

the "real" world of social science research. Before reading

32

the requirements for approval, I naively assumed that I would
personally be responsible for maintaining professional ethics
in the field and in my research. I was quite wrong as the
University, through the guidance of the Federal government,
has an intense interest to insure "that the rights and welfare
of human subjects are adequately protected..." (UCRIHS, 1993)
Ironically, this reduction of human beings into human subjects
is one of the things I had hoped not to do in my work.
Germane to explaining the formations of my methods, however,
is the one condition of UCRIHS that was most influential in
the course of events of my research.

I was informed that current ethical standards, imposed
through UCRIHS upon any research involving the University,
required that I fully disclose my position at the Sun Dances
as an anthropologist and request permission to perform
research. To go into the field without announcing that I was
an anthropologist would have required a month long full
committee review of my proposal and, I was advised, could
require several months of appeals and revisions if I chose to
make things complicated in terms of "procedures" and "consent
procedures." I took the option of having my research exempted
from review by subscribing to tighter restrictions while
trying to adapt them to my needs and the conditions of the
field work environment.

The idea of obtaining consent did not bother me.

Ethically I think that it is sound. However, the form of

33
permission available at a Sun Dance is difficult to translate
into the legalized discourse of UCRIHS and. vice 'versa.
Ideally, UCRIHS ‘wanted. me to obtain a signed, written,
permission form from every participant! This would have
brought the research to a quick death. As I argued in the
proposal:
Much of the subject population could be

said to have a distrust of written documents

requiring signatures such as waivers, contacts

and especially treaties. Thus, with the

exception of an anonymous survey, introduction

of legalistic written documents, from a

different and often oppressive values

paradigm, into the social matrix would

radically alter behavior and result in low

quality research. (Stalker, 1993)
Through personal negotiation with UCRIHS officials and this
argument in the proposal, I was eventually allowed to merely
obtain oral consent from the Sun Dance Chief, Charles Chipps.
I think UCRIHS was ultimately sensitive to the fact that the
political discourse of rights, protection, power, and
oppression, if initiated by myself in the field as an
unwilling but legal representative of an institution seen to
be potentially exploitative and oppressive, would result in my
being "run out of town." UCRIHS, by anticipating political
and legal rights, prefigures the field in terms of politics
and law, a structuring of reality that.has the possibility for
disastrous results for the anthropologist. Imposing this
discourse on the "native" practice places the anthropologist

in the position of representing an institution that despite

its attempts to be considerate of the rights of traditionally

34

oppressed individuals and groups, is still seen as an
instrument of oppression. The role of "anthropologist" is
thus made formal in terms of a legalistic discourse
unfavorably viewed by the subject population. The conditions
of field work and the position of the anthropologist are
irrevocably altered by this feature. The field of law is
effortlessly made dominant over the field of Sun Dance social
customs if allowed to rule. I, and others at the Dance I
suspect, wanted to avoid this and allow my position as
anthropologist to be formed meaningfully one person at a time
in ways appropriate to the individuals and events of that
summer’s Sun Dances. UCRIHS's concession to oral consent by
Charles largely eliminated this problem of requirements for
consent while causing new ones for me and my methods. My
seeking permission from Charles became a pivotal moment in the
development of my research of the Sun Dance.

The process of seeking UCRIHS approval had other
influences on my method. In formalizing my research proposal
I had to force a fluid method based on living, temporal
negotiations of trust and mutual assurances, into a static
model of legal and contractual limitations, fixed
expectations, and litigation prevention. To attempt to find
out who was at the dances and why on any large scale required
assurances of anonymity or confidentiality as well as written
survey forms with lengthy explanations of the research and

legalistic disclosures and disclaimers of responsibility such

35

as I discussed above. A friendly trip to the Sun Dances to
see what I would learn became a legally structured projection
of method and position into an ideal future that I knew was
dubious in its translated image into bureaucratic forms.
Internally, my position of anthropologist became formal,
legal, and.my abilities to operate in the field poorly defined
despite their rigidity. The values of ethics that UCRIHS
required me to work under, law and institutional ethics, did
not translate into the values of the Sun Dance, friendship,
trust, and respect, but can over-ride them at any time that
system is aggressively employed. I had to carry with me the
trust of lawyers, an agreement with validity in a court of
law, into the realm of the trust through faith in each other's
integrity, humanity, and spirituality. The problem of working
and translating between both worlds was stifling and
occasionally seriously hampered my ability to let go of the
academic and legal "white" world to immerse myself in the
"red" world I had proposed to explore. Having taken on the
institutional agreement and formal internal role of
"anthropologist" I often felt like I was acting, one way or
the other, either to UCRIHS or the brothers of the inipi
ceremony I tried to endure.

Never-the-less, I did attempt to carry out my original
intent of a participation oriented method despite my new found
anxieties. The restrictions were largely mental and in the

end UCRIHS requirements only forced me to do what I would have

36
done anyway, let Charles Chipps and.the rest of the Sun Dance,
tell me what I needed to know and do. It was only the need to
gain expressed permission to study that specifically had any
documented impact on my methods. The rest was temporarily

drowned when I was plunged into being a Sun Dancer.

Influential Individuals: The Woptura Medicine Society Sun
Dance of 1993

I arrived early at the Sun Dance grounds on the Chipps'
family land on Pine Ridge Reservation. In fact, I beat
Charles home by two days. I spent some time talking to Unci,
Charles's mother, and getting lectured on not offering my
advice to frustrated makers of yuwipi rattles that were not
round enough in Unci's opinion. On the second day after
Charles arrived home I talked to him about researching at the
Dance. After a meeting with the few Sun Dance folks already
arrived, he stood with me near the ceremonial house sweat
lodge on top of a gradual hill looking down on the Sun Dance
Arbor. Charles was born in this house, a grey, wood, three
room shack used, with the sweat lodge, for his brother
Godfrey's yuwipi ceremonies. Charles is an imposing man,
powerful in his presence, and this land is the center of
Chipps power. Ellis Chipps is buried here and is said to take
watches from visitors when they are not looking. The land is
sacred.

Nervously, I told.Charles that I was there to support and

37
study the Sun Dance. I asked him if I could take notes on
what I observed while I supported Kim and Stan in the Dance
and generally helped out. I also asked him if I could
implement the survey for which I had UCRIHS approval while I
followed Stan as he made a list of Sun Dancers and their
supporters. Slowly and seemingly with careful consideration
he confirmed that this was only my second year at the Dance
and then told.me to just.walk around, He reminded me, because
I mentioned that I was a student of religion, that this was a
spiritual event not a religious one. "Don' t think about
this," he said, "but just to know it." With that, he moved on
to his own business and the conversation was over. In this
way my methodology was established. Just walk around. This
was basically what I had intended to do in the first place,
prior to filling out UCRIHS forms. "Just walk around" does
not sound very official though. I was actually relieved not
to have to introduce myself to the other Sun Dance camps with
a survey in hand. Still, it was not perfectly clear what
exactly I could do in terms of note taking and the like. I
assumed that I was free to record observation although I still
felt this was best done in private. To this day, despite
several conversations with Charles, I do not know exactly what
the precise status of my permission regarding this research is
with respect to Charles Chips. My assumption, given his
obvious intelligence, is that he does not want me to know, or

does not (yet) care.

38

On the first day of purification, another participant,
involved in academics and developing her recently discovered
Native American identity, urged me to make it absolutely clear
to Charles what I was doing at the Dance. She apparently had
overheard a phone conversation I had with my wife Kristen
about how'I‘was feeling a bit alienated and having a hard time
deciding what I did and did not have approval to observe and
record. Among other things, I had driven Philinea and Ben
Chipps, who I had become friends with, several places on the
Reservation and I wondered if I was putting myself at risk by
going outside my proposed project. Also most people at the
dance assumed that I was wholly ignorant about spirituality
and Lakota tradition, especially if they found out I was an
anthropology student, a fact I would not hide in conversation
if it came up. The condescension on the part of some people
was getting to me. In public I was an eager, and assumed
ignorant learner. In my tent, usually during prayer inspiring
thunder storms, I furiously typed out notes into a lap top and
had absolutely no one with which to discuss my "professional"
observations and many of my personal feelings. This was
enough, when overheard, to prompt this woman to assert that I
should explain to Charles why I was there.

I felt I already had, being one of the first people to
arrive and having talked to Charles about it earlier. He had
even had the opportunity to deny me permission to perform a

formal survey. He had already pretty much established my

39

method. However, this woman is very close to Charles and
perhaps knew something I did not. I also did not want to get
caught up in the wrong end of a camp scandal, "exposed as the
secret social scientist," a violation of my UCRIHS approval,
with Charles too busy with a Dance of nearly over a hundred
people, to remember exactly who I was, why I was there, or
that I had made both clear a week ago. Furthermore, my
experience with UCRIHS had made it completely clear that law
suits against social scientists were feared by the University
and should also be by myself. At a previous Sun Dance I had
been unable to successfully negotiate with the hosting group's
attorney for permission to research. As they were already
engaged in litigation with a media source for unfavorable
public representation, and I, like everyone else, had been
required to sign a waiver, that this attorney wrote, of my
right to legal recourse as a result of participation in the
Dance, I decided expressed written permission would be prudent
but failed to obtain it. The unlikely possibility of a law
suit, stemming from confusion as to my research at the Woptura
Dance combined with published information unfavorably viewed
by someone from the Dance, helped lead me to confirm my
approval. I also wanted to be co-operative. I approached
Charles again for renewed specificity about my position at the
Dance.

On the second day of purification at the Woptura

Dance, I walked up to Charles who was leaning against the side

40

of a car with several other people waiting to speak with him
as well. I was given my turn. I asked him if there was a
time I could talk to him later, because I did not want to
discuss my research in public. He asked me, "about what"? I
told him about why I was at the Dance. He told me to talk to
him about it now. I explained that I had intended to bring
him a canupa, a pipe, to show him that my intentions were good
and honorable. I had been advised to do so by Stan, our group
camp "leader." Charles said that he trusted me and told me
to spit it out. So I blathered on, in public view, about
respecting the dance, the integrity of the people there,
wanting to help maintain the tradition and so on, all truthful
things. Finally I got to how I was also there to study the
Sun Dance for my Master’s thesis and I needed his explicit
permission to take notes and the like. He told.me what I must
do to really learn about Sun Dance - I must do the dance.
"One day, maybe two, and pierce." He smiled as he said this
in the company of several Sun Dancers. Suddenly I was in the
position of maximally participating as a condition of
observing. "You got to give it up, boy," he said gruffly
looking up at the Sun.gesturing with.open palms as if weighing
the air. "You have a pipe?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You need a skirt and other things." He directed me to
one of the Eagle Dancers and told him to make sure I knew

about everything I needed and got it.

41

If I had said no, I might have been asked to leave and
certainly would have lost any respect and standing I had in
the community. But really, I had no time to think about
saying "no." I was instantly whisked into the role of "first
year Sun Dancer," and set in motion" The Eagle Dancer took.me
over to his camp, full of Germans, and Swiss. There he told
one of the women in his camp to make me a skirt. She was
already overworked but agreed without much complaint. I was
sent on my way to gather the other things I would need for my
regalia. When I arrived at camp and told Stan I was dancing,
the*word.quickly spread and attention in the camp to preparing
the Dancers included me. My methods became a full extension
of participant observation. I found myself, as I would later
understand, going beyond Bourdieu’s allowable anthropological
position in practice. I had entered into the dangerous realm
of possibly being the mystified primitivist anthropologist?

The final form of my method, achieved at this point in
the narrative, may extend anthropological investigation into
a "new" realm, but it is scientific, and sound: learn.what the
"natives" think. I need. to know' through observation and
receiving instruction: abandon the position of detached
observer for fully participant-observer, avoiding introducing
intrusions alien to practice: realize the limits of this
position.

The particular circumstance of my fieldwork made this

possible and yielded excellent results. Through full

42
participation I realized, more effectively, my goals of
understanding the Sun Dance. I became privy to information
that would have completely escaped me, much like Walker
becoming a Shaman. (Walker, 1917) I was instantly required to
attend all the powerful ceremonies in the purification lodge
held for Sun Dancers as well as the daily Sun Dancers'
meetings. I was given advice and counseling from elder
Dancers. I had to gather the necessary regalia and equipment
and thus met many people I probably would not have and learned
a variety of things in conversation. Instead of merely
observing and contemplating variances in structure and
symbolic content, such as those I briefly touched on in
Chapter One on Sun Dance literature, I was instead in a
position of carving my own piercing pins, contemplating the
symbolic meaning of the decoration of my skirt and canupa,
taking the axe to the Tree of Life, gazing at the Sun in the
Arbor, feeling the weight of the rope connecting my body to
the Tree, Earth, and Sky. I was still able to observe the
Dance and to gain information traditionally gathered in
fieldwork but I was also in a position, as Sun Dancer and
anthropologist, to learn a whole new level of information.
Some of this is present in accounts by Native Americans.
(McGaa, 1990, and Mails, 1978) Some, to my knowledge, is new
to anthropology as presented in my ethnographic chapters. I
was taken into the realm of the numinous. Instead of

observing a spectacle of religion and speculating upon the

43
experience of the participants, I felt first hand, the power

of Lakota spirituality.

Field Methods Reviewed: The Fall of 1993

I read Bourdieu after my field work and found that he
makes explicit elements of methodology that previously I had
to deduce from ethnographic analysis and field experience.
Pierre Bourdieu’s Logic of Practice, because it is largely
theoretically oriented, provides both an excellent and
explicit guide for methodology'as well as a:recognition.of its
limitations. I take up here, from among many possible found
in Bourdieu, only the issue of the importance of an awareness
of the anthropological position. This forces a healthy
consideration of the limits of knowledge gained from
anthropological participation in practice. I feel that this
allows me to stand on clear and firm theoretical ground for
explaining my methods and also provides for a healthy self-
analysis of those methods. While I use Bourdieu to inform my
methodology, as is obvious from what I have presented so far,
I do not fully subscribe to his limitations, even as I take
his advice.

An awareness of anthropological position became key to my
method. Bourdieu notes that if an anthropologist commits to
practice, he or she is only going to minimally learn about
native habitus because so much of his or her own habitus is

alien. This alien habitus of the researcher will distort the

44
experience of practice and result in an in-authentic
experience of native practice by the researcher. A certain
sense of what is happening may be possible, but Bourdieu
asserts that you have to be born with it to believe it.
Practical belief is not a ‘state of

mind', still less a kind of arbitrary

adherence to a set of instituted dogmas and

doctrines (‘beliefs'), but rather a state of

the body. Doxa is the relationship of

immediate adherence that is established in

practice between a habitus and the field to

which it is attuned, the pre-verbal taking-

for-granted of the world that flows from

practical sense. (Bourdieu, 1990:68)
Bourdieu adds shortly thereafter that the process of
enculturation that begins with childhood and the inscription
of habitus upon the body turns "[p]ractical sense, social
necessity...into nature..." (Bourdieu, 1990:69) This is a
fundamental theoretical consideration for the anthropologist
in the field and one I take to heart. I fully agree that
belief is not a state of mind but an aspect of whole human
experience, a topic that is central to my analysis in Chapter
Three. This is also crucial for it seems as if research
abilities by the anthropologist.are~quite limited in the field
of practice. Here we should ask too, if belief is necessary
to understand practice? Furthermore, if belief is bodily then
does it matter what the mental detachment of the
anthropologist is? How much bodily inscription is required
for belief? Could not, an intense ritual like the Sun Dance,

overwhelm the mind with belief the body? In any case,

according to Bourdieu, social practice can not be

45
authentically apprehended from the "outside" but neither can
the anthropologist authentically penetrate it by placing

oneself on the "inside." The outsider always remains as such.

This leads me to ask, somewhat rhetorically, how does one
ideally perform anthropological fieldwork? I must admit that
I am dissatisfied by Bourdieu's "answer" which seems to be
observation with minimal participation, merely adding
objectification of the objectified practice. Bourdieu is
unable to overcome his constructed dilemma for he makes
practice, and its accurate assessment and reproduction, of
primary importance to anthropology but athen denies the
anthropologist the ability to apprehend it. I had a taste of
this at the Pine Ridge Sun Dance while struggling to shed my
UCRIHS inspired fears in 1993 and found that it had drawbacks.
I was definitely not experiencing a "feel for the game" that
Bourdieu asserts is necessary for proper study and
representation of practice. However, later in the fieldwork
I performed, it became possible to get excellent results by
understanding Bourdieu while at the same time breaking his
"rules." Practice, within limits, I found can be richly
understood through anthropological participation.

Before continuing with this, however, it is best to
continue with Bourdieu. It should be made clear that Bourdieu
objects strongly to the anthropologist "gone native".

Undue participation of the subject in the
object is never more evident than in the case

46

of the primitivist participation of the

bewitched or mystic anthropologist,

which...still plays on the objective distance

from the object to play the game as a game

while waiting to leave it in order to tell it.

(Bourdieu, 1990:34)

Bourdieu does not object to objectification for he sees it as
an inherent and useful feature of scientific inquiryu What.he
objects to is a lack of objectification of the process of
objectification - a lack of awareness of the distortions the
objectification of practice causes in the practical experience
of practice and its representation. I interpret this quote
further as a critique of a lack of disclosure of
anthropological position and the effects this position has on
the objectification of practice, as he also delivers a none
too well supported attack against (an) unnamed
anthropologist(s). In any case, we can conclude that the
anthropologist must understand his or her position as an
anthropologist and the effects upon data, analysis, and native
practice that this has.

The issue of "undue participation" on the part of the
anthropologist is basically a function of critical self-
reflection and self-representation in ethnography. I
certainly never though at any point that I was becoming
Lakota. Neither did I loose sight of my objective distance
even as my subjective distance closed intimately into the
reach of the symbolic and affective web of the Oglala Sun

Dance. It was no secret to me or Charles who I was or why I

was there except to the extent that all human spirituality is,

47

for him and me, mysterious. Once I was in the Arbor and
committed to the Dance, I became the "anthropologist" Sun
Dancing, the scientist getting a lesson in spirituality. The
environment of the all nations Dance allows for just such
oddities to happen with authenticity. I was not the only non-
Siouxan individual participating in the dance. Most of the
participants were of ethnic origins other than Sioux Indian.
In this way, we were all like children, learning Sioux ways,
and Charles has built his understanding of our ignorance into
how he runs the Dance even within its very traditional style.
It is expected that we are learning and that we want to. I
did not pose as a "native," but I was essentially told to be
one. (Native in the case of All Nations Dances is so very
wide in its meaning that all participants could, at the
narrowest, be said only to be native to the Earth.) I think
that Charles expected that my experience of Sun Dancing would
be not only intellectually interesting but spiritually
awakening. He was quite correct. He knew that I would learn
something, at least about my own spirituality if not Lakota
spirituality, and I did. I think about both, as I will
discuss in the next chapter. The day before I left, as we
shared a canupa, he said, "now you have something to write
about."

In this way I feel that despite my subsequent intense
participation in the Sun Dance, I escape Bourdieu's scorn for

undue participation by the fact that I am aware of the

48

limitations that this position had in terms of data. I am
also aware of the aspect of "playing the game as a game"
although, I assert, that.the "game playing" was necessarily as
urgent and meaningful for me as it was for many other of the
"native" participants. This was partly a result of the All
Nations make-upiof the dance, as I have briefly touched on, as
well as the symbolic and ritual actions of practice that are
the subject of my analytical chapter.

Bourdieu’s theory casts a necessarily critical eye upon
my methods. Ironically, it is this very scrutiny, the
relentless self-criticism and analysis of Bourdieu, that makes
it possible to extend the study of practice deep into the
practice without mystifying either the anthropology or
subject. The environment of the All Nations dance also
provides a great deal of help by widening the cultural field
of participants to one in which I share background, and thus,
some features of habitus. Ultimately, however, as I am sure
Charles Chipps knows, it is the Sun Dance itself that makes
the method of participation a learning experience and
opportunity for the communication of enormous amounts of

information. This is the logic of practice.

Chapter Three
Theory for Ritual and Symbolic Analysis

In my analysis of the 1993 Woptura Sun Dance data, I
concentrate my efforts on the area of the body and how that is
involved in ritual and symbolic practice. More specifically,
I am concerned with the link between the experience of the
individual Sun Dancer, and the larger social system.

I focus on the body partly because that element of the
ritual was clearly suggested by my participation in the Sun
Dance of that year, and from many previous sweat lodges. Both
the Sun Dance and the inipi, the sweat lodge, are impressively
effective ceremonies. Their ability to communicate large
amounts of cultural information is obvious to the researcher.
Also, the experience of the numinousness, the spiritual,
"altered” state of consciousness achieved through
participation, stimulated my curiosity and offered quite a
challenge for interpretation and translation into academic
discourse in writing.

In preparation for this thesis, I began reviewing sources

that would help me analyze what I felt to be a crucial part of

49

50
the Sun Dance experience. I returned to Rappaport’s ideas on
the numinous aspect of ritual and the body as locus of
symbolic and ritual activity. Rappaport forms the core of my
theory for analysis of the Sun Dance of 1993 but, in my
opinion, requires some modification to provide sufficient
analysis.

I add a modicum of Bourdieu, because of his tighter
integration of the body and social systems. Bourdieu places
more emphasis, due to habitus, on the physical learning and
incorporation of information. I feel he goes too far with it
and thus, only employ a suggestion of his thinking. By
combining the two authors, I get a well enough rounded theory
to explicate the physically felt, affective, and nondiscursive
aspects of Sun Dance ritual and how they are involved with
larger scale social systems external to the individual.

A final key is Sperber's Rethinking Symbolism. In this
work he discusses the social and individual nature of symbolic
associations, especially their increased variance and
individualization as the associations cognitively move farther
and farther from the focalization point. As Sperber outlines
it, it is the ability of symbolic systems to be both personal
and cultural, and for meaning to travel along that continuum,
that makes religious or spiritual experience so unique and
powerful. His work also helps me to cope with the All Nations
aspect of this Sun Dance as well as my own anthropological

position during research.

51

What I apply to the Sun Dance is a theory of the action
of ritual symbol systems in the human consciousness of lived
experience, that makes religious, ritual, or spiritual
practice special, pervasive, and attractive to contemporary
practitioners. I feel that it is also important to lay out
some theoretical considerations concerning' representation
before presenting the ethnographic information contained in
the chapters following this one. Therefore, after laying out
the basis for the theory I use to analyze portions of the Sun
Dance, I will also offer some thoughts on the ethnographic
sketches of the Dance that I give in Chapters Five and Six.
These concerns center largely around the limits of
anthropological knowledge and distortions caused by written

and scientific representation.

Sources and Inspiration for Theory

Each author from.whom.I draw to construct this theory,
offers the components I use in a larger more comprehensive
theoretical frame work. It is not possible in this thesis to
fully contextualize these elements despite the attraction of
doing so. Each constituent, especially Rappaport and
Bourdieu, complements the other by making up for deficiencies
in the other. The result is a multi-perspective theory that
allows for abstraction of the Sun Dance into an artificial
structure alien to the practice of the Dance but highly

amenable to scientific presentation and understanding, as well

52
as comprehension of the Dance in terms of its highly
integrated actual form of structure and individual in
practice.

As I mention earlier, Rappaport's work on religion and
ritual was central to the development of this thesis. I
attended Rappaport's lectures on religion and ritual at the
University of Michigan during the spring of 1993, just before
I did my official fieldwork. During one lecture, the concept
of the numinous was introduced. From talking to Sun Dancers
and from many experiences in the sweat lodge I recognized
instantly the concept's ability to make much of the Sun Dance
intelligible and presentable in written analysis. Here, I
neglect most of the rest of Rappaport’s argument on religion
in ritual in the maintenance of economy of writing. However,
it is important to mention that one of the main thrusts of the
theory is tijresent.a*well structured model for understanding
religion and ritual especially in terms of their ability to
regulate and harmonize social life. The numinous does require
that we consider what Rappaport calls the ultimate sacred
postulate, for when the numinous is combined with the ultimate
sacred postulate, the result is Truth, at least in terms of
the system that generated that ultimate sacred postulate. We
will also briefly review Rappaport on the importance of the
body as locus of analysis of symbolic and ritual action.

Rappaport makes my work a little easier by defining both

the crucial terms of numinous and ultimate sacred postulate in

53
relation to each other.

It is of interest that sacred
propositions and numinous experiences are the

inverse of each other. Ultimate sacred
postulates are discursive but their
significata are not material. Numinous

experiences are immediately material (they are

actual physical and psychic states) but they

are not discursive. Ultimate sacred

postulates are unfalsifyable; numinous

experiences are undeniable. (Rappaport, 1979)

Many times in talking to people at Sun Dances, I watched and
listened as their ability to describe their experience broke
down quickly into an admission that it was impossible to
describe, if it did not begin that way. Indeed, even in my
own notes from the field, I find it impossible to account for
all that is meaningful. Rappaport, in "The Obvious Aspects of
Ritual," seems to find that there is an even more ecstatic
state than the numinous, one that he calls the mystical.
Those who have reached those profound

states called mystical report a loss of

distinction, an experience of unification with

what they take to be the divine object and

perhaps the cosmos. The experience, they say,

is ultimately meaningful, but being devoid of

distinction is devoid of reference .

(Rappaport, 1979)

The reason I mention this is that a few sentences later
Rappaport notes that numinous experiences may fall short of
mystical while still being undeniable. Thus, there may be
some fuzziness and.qualitative variance to the non-discursive
aspect of the numinous. It may have some discursive elements

as it will be connected to structures of symbolic discourse.

It is perhaps safe to assume that in a numinous state a

54

certain amount of symbolic structuring is present in the
bodily and emotive phenomenon and thus it may be partially
discursive while it also remains largely non-discursive. In
several of the sources that Rappaport gives his students to
read on the numinous, (Bateson, 1972; Fernandez, 1965;
Fernandez, 1986: and Kapferer, 1986) the feeling that the
authors are trying to work with is one of "wholeness" or
rather an experience of a whole that others experience as
well. This seems to be the mystical experience Rappaport
discusses while the numinous is less "whole" and more
particular to the individual while still being largely shared
with others. My dwelling on this fine level of distinction
will become more meaningful when I take up Sperber and in
example.

Another aspect of the numinous that I feel I must
embellish is its very intellectual quality. By this I mean
that it is described by Rappaport as an emotional feeling; He
seems to give it no corporal or somatic sense. "Feeling" in
Rappaport's sense is largely disconnected from the body, it is
mental. "Feeling" in the sense I use it in this thesis is a
body and mind faculty, a sensation that potentially involves
the entire human being. Embarrassment for example, involves,
among other things, an increase in heart rate, a flush in the
face, and perhaps a sensation of hotness. Nervousness before
an audience can involve sensations of "butterflies in the

stomach" as well as sweating and even changes in body odor.

55

I want to ensure that we are not detaching the mind from the
body, as I think Rappaport may have a tendency to do if only
by simple, benign neglect. Thus, when I use his concept of
the numinous, I do so insisting that it have a tangible
physical sensation to it. 'This is achieved with a little help
from Bourdieu. We should first turn attention to the ultimate
sacred postulate.

Ultimate sacred postulates are components of what
Rappaport calls the liturgical order, basically the ideas and
actions of religion that remain fairly invariant.- the body of
knowledge, beliefs, and practices that make up a religion.
The first Lakota I learned was "Mitakuye Oyasin" - "all my
relations" or "we are all related." This is a Lakota ultimate
sacred postulate that has undergone a rather difficult
translation into English for non-native participants. "All my
relations" is taken to mean that "we are all related." This
in turn means all of us at the dance, all of us in the world,
and all of us humans and the earth, sky, four directions,
Wakan Tanka, the plants, the animals, water, and just about
everything else. wakan Tanka is (him) it self, an ultimate
sacred postulate, and a very interesting one at that. wakan
Tanka is often translated for me as "Great Mystery," rather
than "Almighty God," as in Mails. Great Mystery as an
ultimate sacred postulate is very sensible to me as it posits
an ultimate truth that everyone can easily experience, the

inability of human beings to comprehend the entirety of the

56

world. I return to this idea later in my conclusions in this
thesis. Ultimate sacred postulates are the most general and
basic of concepts in a particular religion. They are often
ambiguous enough to allow for re-interpretation, such as the
shift in meaning of Wakan Tanka that I briefly pointed out in
Chapter Two. What is crucial to take from Rappaport on
ultimate sacred postulates is that they are neither
falsifiable nor verifiable. One cannot disprove wakan Tanka,
nor can one prove Wakan Tanka. Still, Wakan Tanka is at the
heart of Lakota practice and discourse and is taken to be
fundamentally true. I do not focus on ultimate sacred
postulates much in my work here for I find that they are well
explicated in other works and rather easy to identify due to
the structure oriented analysis of those works.

Rappaport takes lies and deceit to be one of the great
problems confronting social orders and religions. Ritual
ameliorates this problem by providing the unfalsifyable,
unprovable ultimate sacred postulate with a link to a personal
and undeniable experience of the numinous that makes the
ultimate sacred postulate real. The numinous is the personal
proof of the existence or truth of the ultimate sacred
postulate. Ritual engenders a religious experience that
validates the religion. .Again, I emphasize that my reading of
Rappaport finds the feeling of the numinous to be largely
limited to the cognitive. I assert however, that religious

experience is not just cognitive, not just contemplative, but

57
felt as well: cried, cut, and bled. Spiritual conviction
exists on a level that need not be thought for it is part of
the very experience of living.

Before providing a source to support this modification of
Rappaport's numinous, I think that it is important, and only
fair to Rappaport, to mention that he too is concerned with
the body in ritual. Rappaport notes:

By drawing into a posture to which

canonical words give symbolic value, the

performer incarnates a symbol. He gives

substance to the symbol as that symbol gives

him form. (Rappaport, 1979)

This, I believe is another aspect of the numinous experience,
the full incorporation of the human individual into the
symbolic matrix that makes up the religious system. This is
as much of the body as we really get from Rappaport, however.
The numinous is an excellent theoretical consideration, and
its relationship with the ultimate sacred postulate to make
truth, is key to understanding why people Sun Dance today
instead of participating in the religions they were raised to
practice. However, we need to take this largely cerebral
understanding of the action of ritual, point it in the
direction of the body indicated here, and go deep into the
organism of homo sapiens. Bourdieu waits there.

I have not enough room here to even scratch the surface
of Bourdieu’s theory of practice let alone the desire to try

and summarize his raspberry thicket of theory. However, we

should recall the incorporated and institutional aspects of

58

habitus that Bourdieu lays out in Logic of Practice.
Incorporated habitus is the habitus that is learned by, and
lived in, the body. Institutional habitus are the larger
structuring structures that may have a small place in the body
but largely remain in social domain outside of individual
bodies. What I focus on in Bourdieu is the pervasiveness and
power of incorporated habitus in light of the relationship of
the numinous and ultimate sacred postulates.

Bourdieu asserts that habitus is the embodied generative
schemes of cultural practice. IHuman practice has its basis in
physical learning from socialization that is non-reflexive,
felt, and acted. The experience of the individual in cultural
practice is not one of thinking, weighing options, calculating
strategies, and considering the responses of other actors.
All these functions are largely performed. by the basic
generative schemes of habitus without need for the time
consuming actions of reflection. Perhaps it is best for me to
offer a sample of Bourdieu's own attempt to define habitus:

The conditions associated with a partic-

ular class of conditions of existence produce

habitus, the system of durable, transposable

dispositions, structured. structures. predis-

posed to function as structuring structures,

that is, as principles which generate and

organize practices and representations that

can be objectively adapted to their outcomes

without presupposing a conscious aiming at

ends or an express mastery of the operations

necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu,

1990:53)

Now Bourdieu modifies this sketch over and over and the

true model of habitus lies in the entirety of Logic of

59

Practice, and unfortunately becomes so cumbersome as to defy
application. However, it is not my purpose here to be a
advocate for habitus. I find, and am not alone, that habitus
offers little opportunity for self-reflection and self-
awareness among other features of human consciousness which I
observe in the field. Habitus is a bit extreme in the
direction of the body and too complex to be useful in a
limited work such as this. What it does provide me with,
theoretically, is a crucial understanding of the importance of
the human body in cultural practice.

Culture and its expression by humans is not a mental
exercise alone. Bourdieu leads us to understand that much of
human practice of culture is performed without reflection and
is as much felt, bodily and emotionally, as it is thought.
Body position and posture, gender construction, social
division of labor by age and gender, and religious experience
all intimately involve the body. Whether habitus is the only
thing going in theory of practice or not is irrelevant to this
thesis. What is taken from Bourdieu is an understanding that
what people feel‘with‘their'entire lived.experience, conscious
and "unconscious," is incredibly important. Comprehension of
ritual action upon the body is key to an effective analysis of
that ritual.

Through Bourdieu, we get a sense of the urgency and
totality of physical human experience that is lost in

Rappaport. This emphasis on the physical and emotional

60

importance of the body fills in Rappaport’s numinous
experience to make it a very powerful tool for explaining the
Sun Dance. It is the whole experience of the ritual,
intellectual, emotive, and somatic, that allows the numinous
to validate and enliven.the ultimate sacred postulates. It is
the whole sensual immersion of the human.being in the practice
of the ritual of the Sun Dance that makes it profound and
moving. Culture and religion are not so much intellectual
enterprises as lived experiences and expressions. The Great
Mystery does not just confound the mind of the Sun Dancer, it
brings chills to the skin, it makes the stomach fall and the
knees go weak, it is felt like a great loneliness at the same
time it bursts the heart with joy of living. Rappaport gives
us the clarity to see the separate components and their
logical relationship. Bourdieu shows us how tightly the two
are intertwined and.allows us to understand.their relationship
in practice.

The final key to my theory is found in Dan Sperber's
Rethinking Symbolism. I am very interested in the symbolic
play of the Sun Dance especially since the mix of people at
the dance is multi-cultural. The Sun Dance, as a living
ritual, is entering a new phase of history of practice where
it is extended to non-Lakota individuals. Sperber is key to
helping this theory grapple with the largely disparate
backgrounds of individuals in the Sun Dance and their

involvement in a common ritual practice. Sperber offers a

61
quiet and understated understanding of the variations of
experience that. make individuals different even as they
conform largely to shared beliefs. Sperber first asserts that
linguistic models of symbolism.have largely proven only their
own inability to explain symbolism.effectivelyu From there he
moves on to attempt to offer a substitute. I would love to
summarize his theory of symbolism.for the reader here but this
is beyond the reach of this thesis as we only require one
feature of it“ I do strongly urge the reader, if not familiar
with this work, to read it. What I use from Sperber is his
theoretical proposal involving focalization and evocation.
This brief passage will summarize the necessary elements for
my theory.
It is essential to understand that a

symbolic representation determines a focal

condition, determines an evocational field,

but does not determine the paths of evocation.

The focal condition is the very one which, by

remaining unfulfilled, has led to the putting

in quotes of the representation. [A focal one

which does not invoke meaning becomes a sym-

bol] The evocational field includes all the

information susceptible of fulfilling the

focal condition. But, evocation may revive

information that turns out to be more inter-

esting, better able to capture the attention

than the representation in quotes or the focal

condition itself. This relative freedom of

evocation is at the very basis of the social

use of this psychological mechanism, symbol-

ism.(Sperber, 1975:122)

Sperber repeatedly uses examples of smell. In some cases
he shows, with the example of smells, how evocational fields
do not have to be taxonomic. A smell of sage may evoke

several feelings, mental images, other smells and memories

62

that are not related except by this momentary assemblage cued
by the hint of a smell of sage. In turn, many of the items
stored in memory may themselves be focalizations, in quotes,
that are open ended in their meaning; A symbol, in my reading
of Sperber, is a sign‘ with unfinished business - one that is
always looking to see what else it means. Where this is
important is that symbols, even when they have publicly
defined meanings, are such that they can continue to penetrate
into the mind making more and more forays into more and more
evocational fields thus creating extensive and elaborate webs
of meaning; The meaning of the symbol, say one's canupa, then
becomes both socially constructed and personally meaningful.
In the very beginning of Rethinking Symbolism, Sperber says
that it is his intention to work with symbols as both social
and individual.

Now, returning to the comment I made in Rappaport about
numinous and partially numinous state, we see making absolute
distinctions is impossible. The numinous state is likely to
become a focalization - "What is this experience? What am I
feeling!?!" The mind then goes about the business of trying
to make this numinous experience meaningful in other terms and
thus some aspects of it may eventually be linked to symbolic
systems, or sign systems, that are discursive. For a numinous

Sun Dancer, the teachings and prayers of the Sun Dance will

 

‘ "Sign" in Sperber's use is a focalization that has a
limited domain of/for meaning - a fixed invocation.

63
provide many of the meanings that society offers and these
comprise one of the fields of evocation. Other fields may be
highly individual or gradient blends of individual and social
symbolic systems just like the Sun Dance will ultimately be.
Bourdieu provides additional insight in this work of symbols.
Sperber insists that evocational fields need not be
linguistically ordered or taxonomic. Indeed, they may involve
smells, sounds, sensory feelings, somatic feelings, and moving
into Bourdieu's realm, body postures and emotional states
associated strongly with bodily states such as the hot flush
of embarrassment, or the deep nervous tension of sexual
excitement. Thus, the pain of piercing can be a focalization
partially connected to discursive ultimate sacred postulates.
This whole complex may be later associated with other painful
experiences, or later Sun Dances, to compound.the‘meaninga .At
some level, the Sun Dance experience is fairly uniform.for all
Dancers and is thus discursive in socially constructed systems
of meaning. At another level, the meaning of the Sun Dance is
beyond the ability of social science to know as it is bound up
within the living experience of the Sun dancer in his or her
body and extensive passive memory. This individual aspect of
the Sun Dance is significantly a non-discursive feeling and
memory made discursive only in part and only through the
socially constructed systems to which it is connected at
levels possibly too distant from the storage of the numinous

somatic and emotive conditions of the ritual to accurately

64

represent them for scientific purposes. However, this action
of traveling from socially meaningful to individually
meaningful, while foiling scientific attempts to know all,
satisfies religion's aim, and what used.to be.Lakota society's
need, to indelibly link the individual to the social. At the
same time the Sun Dancer internalizes socially generated and
meaningful information, it is being combined with personally
meaningful systems of associations that are likely to be non-
discursive and bodily but which make the experience of social
systems intensely and intimately real as well as persistently
unfolding, for ‘the symbols employed in ritual are both
visually inscribed upon the surfacetof the body and incessant-
ly' seek cognitive :meaning, thus transcending* the ritual
itself.

I am.not sure if this is what Charles Chipps wanted.me to
learn about the Dance. His belief that I should do the Dance,
and my subsequent participation, certainly gives me an
opportunity to inform the discussion in a unique and
interesting way. While speculation about the numinous
experience of the Sun Dance is intriguing, scientifically, it
is unsatisfying for it is difficult to provide evidence or
know example. Numinous, being non-discursive, is difficult to
pull from informants. However, the anthropologist, through
thoughtful practice, can possibly penetrate the numinous and
bring back some understanding of it. What I soon attempt to

present from this frame of analysis is a sense of what the

65
numinous is like. Of what feelings is it made and to what
discursive cultural elements are those feelings connected?
What is the sense of the numinous and the spiritual/religious

experience is engenders?

Ethnographic Considerations

I will be brief, following that rather lengthy exposition
of theory, in giving some general disclaimers before embarking
on ethnographic description and analysis. Current
anthropological standards require a great deal of awareness on
the part of the author when constructing a text, especially
when that text makes some claim to accurately represent a
different cultural system. The theoretical considerations
detailed above lay significant ground work for this short
section.

To begin with, as I noted, it is impossible to know what
is happening in the minds and bodies of Sun Dancers. The
anthropologist can only speculate about much of individual
experience. However, a certain amount of uniformity of
experience is present in that a great , deal of the ritual
process and contents are common to all participants. Further,
the basic action of symbolic communication between social
structures and personal, bodily, and mental systems of meaning
should.be the same for all participants" ‘While the variables,
and thus the end product, may be different, the equation is

the same. In my ethnographic description, the variables may

66

be from my own background, and thus, ultimately, so is the
meaning. I[ try to insure that these personal moments are
noted, for they are important to include, given.my theory, but
should be known for what they are. Many of the variables are
shared with others. For example, I was pierced to the tree
the same round as another first time Dancer and thus our
piercing experiences, at least the external, social, and
ritual process portions of them, were similar. Likewise, all
Sun Dancers enter the Sun Dance lodge twice a day and from
what I witnessed everyone suffers a good deal in several
lodges while finding the strength to remain un-affected in
others. Again, what I am attempting to do is flesh out one
example of the operation of the theory explicated above.
There must be some commonality just as there must be some
individuality. I try to get at both and to make each element
clear. If, occasionally, the reader has a hard time
distinguishing between the two it is because, given the action
of ritual, that should be the case. Given the theory, and I
should be no exception to it, the line between social and
individual should be ultimately indistinguishable. We can
recognize, when deep in one field or the other, which one it
is, but the boundary is often fluid, shifting, and elusive.
Ultimately, the symbolic and ritual mechanics are operating,
despite unique configurations, in the same way for myself and
other Dancers.

I also want to note that I am abstracting from one Sun

67

Dance held in 1993 of which I was a part. I make no claims to
represent "the Sun Dance," as there really is no such thing,
only a pattern of actually enlivened rituals. I also make no
claim to encapsulate this entire Dance. My depiction, due to
the theory I attempt to illustrate, is decontextualizing and
detemporalizing. I do, in my description of Sun Dance inipi,
attempt to preserve some of the temporal feel of the ceremony
but in no way do I claim to be able to translate lived ritual
into static writing. Further, I can not provide all the
information and points of view of the Sun Dance that make up
its pool of variables for potential meaning. This
ethnographic sketch is no substitute for being there. I am
not claiming to represent practice in anything but an
imperfect and constructed form. However, given the medium,
and the goal of supporting a theory, I do what I can to make
the most of writing.

While this is an imperfect art, and that it is an art
should be clear, it does have the potential for effective
communication, even between itself and other unlike systems
like music, feeling, and spirituality. Realizing the
difficulty, I still attempt to make discursive the non-
discursive numinous for I feel it is better to craft a decent
misrepresentation than to leave theory unsupported and thus

confined to speculation or esoteric knowledge.

Chapter.Four:

Inipi

The inipi was my introduction to Lakota ritual and in
this thesis will be ours. It stands on its own as an
independent ceremony, can be combined.with pipe ceremony, and
also forms one of the core ceremonies of the larger ritual
practice of the Sun Dance. I represent inipi here not to
attempt an exhaustive description of the ceremony or to
comprehensively address the complex and widespread tradition.
My use for the inipi in this text is something more parallel
with what I believe to be one of the purposes of the ritual.
I give this narration of inipi to give sense. In the previous
chapter I asserted that ritual can create numinous states in
the participant in order to combine a personal experience of
the divine, the numinous, with discursive teachings about
religion, or in the case of Charles Chipp's philosophy,
spirituality. I also noted that, following Bourdieu, a great
deal of information is transferred by ritual into the body -
effective ritual is felt as much as it is heard or watched.
In this way, religious experience is physical as well as
cognitive. In this ethnograhic sketch, I present the bodily

impact of inipi. I try to communicate part of what the ritual

68

69
obviously tries to communicate - the bodily and spoken lessons
to be learned. I am guided in what I present by this focus,
by the theory that I have laid out. I am also guided by
Charles’ teachings about the lessons to be learned in the
lodge.

It should be obvious that some aspects will be left out.

I eschew a direct structural outline of the process of inipi
and its ritual features. I want to describe the experience of
the lodge. I also am not describing an actual lodge that
happened historically. Accurately representing a specific
lived ceremony is difficult given the impossibility of
technological data collection, as you will see, during the
lodge. The semi-fictional inipi narrated here contains much
that is important to understanding the theory that I have
advanced and is quite true to practice. I have been in enough
lodges to accurately depict one.

I structure this ethnography to follow the events of a
sweat lodge as generally occurs from the time participants
arrive to go into the lodge to the time they leave the area to
go about their business. Where this chronology offers
opportunities for me to embellish the representation with
information that informs the activities I will do so. This
will necessarily require that the artificial simulation of the
natural flow of time be broken although in many ways it will

mimic the way my mind wanders during practice. In these

70

cases, I present a specifically theoretical interpretation of
events or add detail from other lodges that will show the
variances 'within. structure and ‘tend. to present. multiple
realities within.a single time frame. .Again.in many'ways this
seems to me to mimic the actions of the mind endlessly
recalling and reworking past experiences in the experience of
the present. What you will read is a fictional representation
of‘a Sun Dance inipi ceremony involving memory of actual sweat
lodges of the past and reflecting a particular analytical
orientation focusing on ritual action upon the body. My
analysis of inipi is implicit in this representation. I make
it explicit in the concluding chapter.

The lodge is presented as if you, the reader, were
accompanying me, the author, in the present. This would make
you male, as all sweats at the Chipps land are segregated by
sex. Also notable is that this lodge will be a Sun Dance
lodge. This makes for certain themes specific to the larger
ceremony of the Wiwanyag Wacipi. I have never been in a
Lakota poured inipi that was not related to Sun Dance, so I
can not say whether or not the particular style I describe
here is unique to Sun Dance or not. I do know that Charles
firmly believes that you learn in the lodge the skills you
need in the Sun Dance Arbor. Since most of the lodges that
Charles pours involve little English, the language of most of
the participants, he must believe that much of the knowledge

comes through the body, and the spirit.

71
“Men's Inipi in Ten Minutes!"

Seth, one of the members of our small camp, a loose
association of friends and acquaintances centered around Stan
and.Kim, both veteran dancers of three years, runs up from the
fire of the lodge to tell us that the men's inipi will be
starting soon and then runs back down. We walk down a slight
hill toward the lodge from our camp up on the ridge
overlooking a small flat that contains other group’s camps and
the Sun Dance Arbor with the lodges. A creek bed, dry last
year due to little rain but.wet this year, runs behind the Sun
Dance Arbor. It is noticeable only because trees grow along
its steep narrow banks, the only trees in the area. Night
hawks swoop around overhead feeding on this summer's abundant
mosquitos and making their muted trilling screech. The sun,
low on the horizon, is finally weakening and the day is
cooling off quickly without cloud cover from a high near or
above one hundred degrees. We will most likely be in the
lodge during sunset. We walk through the tall grass of the
prairie. It is thick this year with small sun flowers and lots
of sage thanks to the rain. It is a beautiful summer on the
prairie for flowers. I make a tobacco offering and pick sage
for in the lodge, at least one thick handful a foot or so
long. The smell of fresh sage, almost mint like, is a smell
of the Sun Dance and Lakota sacred ceremony. Sage is found
drying in every camp to be used in ceremony and taken home.

Sage is used in Sun Dance regalia and to wrap the Dancer's

72

canupa. Sage is used to smudge prayer ties, to cleanse areas
for ritual, and to make tea. It dries on the dashboard of my
truck and in my tent. Sage is everywhere at the Sun Dance.

The Arbor we walk toward is a circle of two rows of pine
poles that support a roof of pine boughs cut from stands of
trees on the edge of the badlands. The roof provides shade to
spectators of the dance and a special part of the Arbor where
the dancers rest between rounds. Some sleep there if the
rains are not too strong at night. Today, the second day of
purification, the Arbor is about half covered after the day's
labor. Tomorrow we will work on it some more. The new Tree
of Life is not yet up but last year's still stands, its leaves
are brown and dry, the colors of the flags and prayer ties
placed.on it by last.year's dancers are faded fromiexposure to
the elements. It is still a magnificent sight and the ropes
hanging along the trunk remind me of the piercing to come.

The sweat lodges, men's and women's, are on the west side
of the Arbor, the side that the camps are on. The creek runs
around.the north, east, and south sides about ten yards at the
closest to twenty five yards in some areas. During the Dance,
the sweat lodges will be part of the general Arbor area which
is cordoned off to prevent the entry of all but Sun Dancers,
Fire Keepers and Sun Dance Helpers. It is now a sacred area
in that it is the Arbor, and the Sun Dance lodges are there,
but by the end of tree day, the fourth day of purification, it

will be a highly sacred, restricted, and carefully controlled

73
area.

As we approach the men’s lodge the basic, external,
spatial layout and design of the structures become obvious.
The lodges are canvas covered semi-domes about three and a
half feet tall. Tall enough for a grown man to sit in but no
more. They are, however, pretty big around, nearly ten feet
in diameter. Each inipi sits with its one low door facing
west, toward its fire pit. The door is a small arch about
half as tall as the lodge, it stands open now. In front of
the door, to the west, is a mound of dirt with a long red and
black stick upright in it and the alter for a canupa, the
sacred pipe, and other items used in the lodge: an occasional
drum, herbs, jewelry that should not be taken in, or perhaps
a pair of someone's eye glassesn They say you should not.wear
any metal in the lodge for you could get burned but I have
never noticed either my wedding ring or my earrings in the
lodge. Sometimes I remove my jewelry, sometimes I forget.
The fire pit is circular, about as big around as the lodge,
and about as deep as the lodge is high. The dirt taken from
the pit is placed in a wall around the edge with the east
side, the side facing the lodge, remaining open.

The fire is mostly burned down now into a bed of very hot
coals and large, well-burned logs covering the stones to be
placed in the lodge. Other men are gathered near the lodge
waiting for the ceremony to begin. The fire keepers prepare

the pitch forks and shovels to pull stones from the fire. At

74

the last minute, some men make prayer ties, small cloth
squares filled with tobacco and tied on a string without
knots, to take into the lodge with them. We made ours at
camp; a time for conversation and reflection on the ceremony.
Almost everyone is already changed into a towel wrapiand‘maybe
their shoes. There is talk of other lodges, camp politics,
items needed for the dance, how hot the fire is, the days
events and the things that must be done tomorrow. The
atmosphere is jovial and relaxed but with quiet and reverent
undertones. Since nearly everything in the Lakota world is
sapient, deserving of respect, and watching, we should be on
our best behavior, especially in an area as sacred as the Sun
Dance inipi. I am usually a bit anxious about going in a
lodge, it is almost always hard for me to endure. One of the
things I will try and find out is who is pouring water. The
water pourer decides how many rocks come in, how much water
goes on them toicreate steam, and leads the prayers and songs.
Different water pourers have different styles but if he is
Lakota, you can bet your life it will be hot.

When the water pourer arrives, things get more serious.
He discretely takes off his clothes, wraps himself in a towel
and circles the lodge to enter from the south side of the
door. There is a strong modesty in Lakota that requires that
naked men be out of sight of women and vice versa. New Age
mixed lodges of naked people are scoffed.at.by'Charles~ Other

rules are important for the novice to pick upiquicklyx No one

75

is to cross the invisible line that connects the stem of the
canupa, the pipe on the alter, to the fire pit. This is
always a problem for people new to the sweat lodge. Never
cross in front of a pipe. Walk all the way around the fire
and the lodge if you need to but don' t cross the pipe.
Tonight there will be no pipe after the lodge, it is not
required, but we still observe the restriction on motion. The
total distance from lodge door to fire edge is probably ten to
fifteen yards - far enough to be safe from the fire but not
too far to carry heavy, hot rocks. Fire keepers can cross the
line if they must but even they try to observe the pattern of
clockwise motion with minimal crossing of the pipe.

The water pourer is smudged with smoke of cedar and sage
and enters the lodge on hands and knees. Perhaps we can hear
him say "Mitakuye Oyasin," as he crosses the threshold. He
offers other prayers in Lakota as he circles the inside of the
lodge around the stone pit to come to his place inside the
lodge at the south side of the door after smudging the inside.
When he gives us the cue, or we see everyone else beginning to
line up, we follow and form a loose line around the back of
the lodge to enter, as the water pourer did, from the south
side. Thus, we have circled the lodge once already,
clockwise. We are carefully smudged head to toe, front and
back, by a fire keeper or lodge-mate with the smoke of cedar
and sage, a distinct smell. I have been exposed to it enough

already that it creates a calmness in me. It is, for me, the

76

smell of sacred Lakota ceremony and brings to me the Lakota
spirituality that I have been taught. When lighting a bundle
of sage for a class this fall, fresh from the field, I was
calmly overwhelmed by the powerful associations, especially
the physical feeling of ease and relaxation and the mental
clarity and sense of purpose that the smell of sage brings.
I get down on my hands and knees to enter the lodge. I place
my forehead to the earth, as some others do, and say, as we
all must, "Mitakuye Oyasin." Men in and outside the lodge
respond in kind or simply say, "hau." I crawl in the circle
of the lodge to the next place to sit, today, the "hot spot",
first row from.the stone pit, opposite the door. The floor of
the lodge, at least the first row'today, is covered with fresh
sage and the smell is beautiful. At another Sun Dance, the
lodge had been in use for months and the grass floor had been
worn to mud that smelled like a cattle yard. I had a cut on
my big toe and tried to duck walk in the lodge to my place to
keep the cut out of the mud. Red Feather, an experienced,
Lakota, Sun Dance expert, and one of Charles's favorite
helpers, sternly informed me that, "we all crawl in the lodge,
nobody is different here."

There is some quiet joking in the lodge as the rest of
the men file in. We welcome them with "Mitakuye Oyasin,"
meaning literally, "all my relations." I think of this as an
extension of ritual kinship to all our fellow corporeal

participants as well as the ancestors, the Tankashela that are

77
integral semi-intangible participants. The Earth, Make, the
Water, Mini, the Sky, Mahpiya, and other numerous beings are
also our relations. With Mitakuye Oyasin, we greet and
acknowledge them all.

Invariably there is a late comer and everyone must pack
together as tight as possible, knees under chins. There is a
joke about how "in the men’s lodge it's shoulder to shoulder,
in the women’s it's hip to hip." Not everyone in the lodge is
a Sun Dancer but all the Sun Dancers should be in the lodge.
The lodge is for purification of the Dancers and many of the
supporters wish to be purified. Our minds and bodies are to
cleansed by the sweat. From the inside of the lodge, we can
see the weave of willow saplings that make the frame in
arches. There are sixteen saplings set in the ground and a
number of them wrapped parallel with the ground to frame up
the structure. The first layer of covering, the blankets,
creates a motley pattern over the very geometric form of the
frame wrought in organic materials. I take the prayer ties
from around my neck and tuck them in between the frame and the
blankets so that they hang above my head. I learned this from
watching others. When everyone is in, towels are removed, if
they were not taken off at the door. The water pourer tells
us all to be quiet while the first five rocks are brought in.
He tells the fire keeper, sometimes called the door keeper at
this point, to bring the first five rocks. "Hau," confirms

the fire keeper using a word. with. meaning from simple

78

acknowledgment to "good" or "I agree." It is also equivalent
to "hello" and is pronounced in variations all the way from a
non-verbal grunt to the enthusiastic "Ho!" I most often hear.

From where I sit, the hot spot, I can see the alter and
beyond that the fire pit. I watch as they pull stones from
the fire. One man pulls stones from the coals with a shovel
and passes them on to the next man's pitchfork. The stone is
then brushed vigorously with an evergreen branch to remove as
much soot and dust as possible. 'This also leaves a pine scent
on the stones. The stone is then carried to the door and the
entire pitch fork passed carefully through. The man on the
north side of the door, usually a trusted elder close to the
water pourer, takes the pitchfork and uses it to place the
first stone in the pit before me. Because Charles, the Sun
Dance Chief, wants hot sweats for the dancers this year, the
pit is very deep and very big - at least three feet deep and
three feet across. The first stone is placed and the water
pourer places a small amount of cedar or some other herbal
substance on the stone to welcome it. These stones are our
grandfathers, our Tankashela, we have been told, we should
honor them and respect them. I may have gathered these stones
myself in my pick-up yesterday or this morning from around
Eagle Nest Butte a few miles away, a sacred area for vision
quest, hanbleca, crying for a vision. The cedar burns when it
contacts the rocks, said to be heated to thousands of degrees

fahrenheit, filling the lodge with a light, aromatic smoke.

79
The silence in the lodge focuses the mind on the task at hand,
keeps men from talking about things outside the lodge, keeps
us in this domain and also inside ourselves.

The next rocks are brought in, welcomed with herbs like
the first, and set clock-wise in the places of the four
directions with one in the center. With this done, the fire
keeper stands or crouches at the door averting his eyes from
looking into the lodge, and awaiting the command of the water
pourer. The water pourer then decides how many more rocks he
wants in the lodge. Sometimes there is discussion between the
two men about how many are in the fire, how many the fire
keepers may want for their own lodge later, or other
technicalities concerning the stones and fire. One stone is
always left in the fire. Today we will get all but ten
stones. Only the fire keeper, who placed the stones, and the
water pourer, who asked for the stones, know how many this
means. The rest of us will have to count. The fire keepers
bring in the stones as fast as possible. New each time a
stone is passed in the door the door keeper says, "Mitakuye
Oyasin." The men in the lodge, if they feel like it, reply in
kind or with "hau." Some of the stones are deep orange -
especially the ones that break as they are placed on the pile
in the pit to reveal their heated core. As the pile of stones
grows, the lodge begins to heat up. My mind wanders to the
events of the day, my home, the future Dance, I loose count of

the stones. They smell hot, dry, and dusty. The skin of the

80

men already glistens with sweat. There is also the odor of
men, the fresh sage we sit on, grass, and the canvas of the
lodge. There may be some talking but mostly there is silence,
waiting. Over thirty stones ranging in size from that of a
man’s fist to larger than his head are brought into the pit.
Over the shimmering heat of the stone pit I can see the fire
keepers pile the remaining stones in the center of the fire
and place wood on top of them to keep them "warm."

The water pourer calls for a bucket of water. The door
keeper passes it through saying again, "Mitakuye Oyasin." The
water pourer and the man opposite the door from him grasp the
galvanized steel bucket by the handle and touch it first to
the stones and then set it on the Earth inside the lodge near
the entrance. The handle of the bucket is wrapped in fresh
sage and red cloth as is the handle of the aluminum dipper
resting in the bucket. As it is brought in and touched to the
stones the water pourer murmurs a prayer in Lakota the only
portion of which I can understand is a prayer for health and
happiness through the water.

"Close the flap," says the water pourer; The door to the
lodge is rolled down and there is some rustling as those on
the outside try and make sure all the light is sealed out.
Around the lodge men may point out light leaks and the
blankets and canvas are tucked and pulled to cover the areas
as much as possible. We are plunged into darkness. The heat

is dry and still. A few men cough or sigh heavily. There is

81
a long, quiet, contemplative silence.

At this point in the ceremony Red Feather, who often
pours lodges at Sun Dances, will "dust off" the rocks by
sprinkling just a little water on the stones. The action of
the water turning to steam lifts any dust off the stones. The
way this sounds in the dark inipi is dramatic. If the stones
are good and hot, and you are sitting where you can see them,
their orange glowing forms attract your eyes giving you an
only roughly defined symbol to contemplate. Then we hear the
water being lifted from the bucket and poured back in, over
and over - a cool, wet sound of water in the dark heat. Many
times at this point in the lodge I am already thirsty from
working in the hot sun all day cutting boughs for the Arbor.
Red Feather may quietly speak before pouring water or as he
dusts off the stones. I cannot comfortably reproduce what Red
Feather would say but it would be quiet and serious reminding
us of the hardship to come in the Sun Dance and the need to
pray hard for strength in the lodge. He may also talk to us
about the day's work and what we will do the next. "Pray
hard, boys," he has said more than once. "Remember your
prayer ties. .Ask the Tankashela for strength." The first few
drops of water hiss sharply into steam as they hit the rocks
and the orange glow turns dark. To me the jumping hiss of
water speaks of the heat of the stones. The heat they radiate
is felt on my skin but is nothing compared to the steam to

come. This is a moment of anticipation for me when the

82
reality of the sweat lodge sinks in, the point of departure
from the mundane world. The sound of water on hot rocks
recalls the suffering and the sanctity of the lodges before
this one. I have to face my fears of the trial I know I am
committed to endure. Then, the singing starts.

Red Feather sings in a high, wavering, quiet voice, full,
to me, of sorrow and suffering. This may just be the way that
he sings, I do not know, nor have I ever felt like I could ask
him, about his singing style. However, I am sure that there
is some stylistic concern to his singing, and it does make
part of the experience of the lodge. Head down, he sings the
"Four Directions" song which honors each of the four
directions, the sky, the earth, and.the Tankashela. 'The first
ladles of water fall, bursting into steam. The song has a
chorus, easy to learn: "cekiya, cekiya. . ." (chay-kee-aye-
auoooooo) in long soulful, mournful notes. "I pray to you, I
pray to you..." And then it tapers off into words that I have
not memorized yet to translate, that honor each direction
followed by the chorus. Indeed, even trying to describe the
effect, or perhaps the affect, of singing is impossible to do
satisfactorily: sonorous, resonant, melancholy, empowering,
humble, dutiful, lamenting, rejoicing, honoring... Inipi
songs and Sun.Dance songs, have affective tonal qualities that
combine with the ceremony and the emotional content of the
meanings of the words to unify the experience of the

individual from feeling to prayer through song. Sadness,

83
strength, power, joy, and humility can all be felt
simultaneously in the songs and one emphasized more than the
others according to the needs of the individual. A lodge
without songs is unthinkable. The power of songs to make
feeling is undeniable. Interestingly, in the summer of 1993,
no drums were used in the lodges.

As the song begins water is poured on.the rocks in nearly
full ladles. It is the steam that makes the lodge truly hot.
It rises off the rocks and runs down the ceiling/walls of the
lodge. If you are tall like me and sit up straight it blasts
you right in the face - hot - and then pours down sunburned
shoulders onto knees. The steam hisses loudly. Sometimes it
whistles and howls. Men sometimes cough and choke in the hot
steam that fills the lodge as they try to sing. Some know the
words to the songs - some don't. The "Four Directions Song"
is fluid in tempo and rises and falls in pitch and intensity.
It begins with a strong articulated verse honoring a direction
and then drifts into the long, deep, moaning verse that I
quoted. After the chorus it flows quickly into the strong
honoring portion again. Different men start the honor verse
at slightly different times because of the looseness of the
tempo of the song; The result is waves of delay in the voices
of the song at this one juncture, with the singers of the
lodge coming to some unity by the time the chorus is reached
again” It is an hypnotic and other-worldly sound.with.no need

for percussion to achieve spiritual transport.

84

I am familiar with the song and just started to learn to
sing it this summer as my ability with songs and the Lakota
language improved with exposure. Still, for me, there is no
need to even know the words or the meaning of the song
specifically because the sound carries a feeling for me that
is equally important. I am told that this is true for others
too. Even in the intense heat of the lodge I can get chills
from the singing. Lodges where I don’t know the long songs
are torture. Chances are this will be the same for you. If
the song does not move me affectively, the feeling is worse.
It is best to try and sing what ever bit you can and.maybe hum
the rest, or pray.

After the "Four Directions Song," we move into another
that I don' t know. Steam just keeps coming, burning my
cheeks, my ears, my knees, and my hands when I try to cover
some especially exposed part of my body. This is one reason
why I stopped to pick sage. Here in the dark I can put it
behind.my ears so that they are partly covered. I have a very
short crew cut this summer to protect me from lice and other
parasites while everyone else has long hair that protects
their ears from the steam. If the air gets too hot to breath
I can bunch up the sage in my hands and breath through it.
Charles told us this trick last year. The smell of sage
again. During one lodge I had the bundle of sage in my mouth
to bite down on to help with the pain.

Some men who do not sing, pray - some very loudly.

85
Prayers can be about anything. Sometimes they are quite
focused on the experience of the heat in the lodge, begging
the Tankashela for help and strength to get through the lodge.
Other ‘times the prayers are cathartic supplications for
forgiveness for wrong doings, requests for help for loved
ones, admissions that the suffering undertaken here is to gain
help for others, pleas for healing and purification. The
intensity is enormous when a lodge is in full force of song
and prayer, a cacophony of voices in spiritual harmony. Some
prayers are openly wept. The body feels the effects of
intense heat on the skin, in respiratory and cardiovascular
changes, thirst and stomach cramps demand relief, the bladder
notoriously wants to release but must be held, breathing is
hard, sitting up is hard, staying in is hard. All this must
be overcome and endured. Singing takes one's attention away
from the feelings of the body and places consciousness in the
flow of song, the sound of voices in harmony around, and an
awareness of the ancestors for whom the songs are sung. The
heat almost becomes a welcome counterpoint experience to the
beauty of the songs, to the emotion of sadness and humbling
within the tones. Prayers turn the mind to other people and
to needs and wants, to problems that are hard to face in the
comfort of the outside world. Here in the lodge everything is
suffering and endurance, crying is common, it is a good time
to face yourself honestly, to admit to yourself those things

that you might otherwise ignore and maybe to admit them to

86
your "brothers" and "uncles" in the lodge. No one will take
advantage of weakness or openness in the lodge except to help
with your "healing" - spiritual, mental, physical, emotional,
etc...

The song ends but the heat stays relentlessly surrounding
the body - oppressive, thick. Men groan and pray. The water
pourer may offer a few words or he may launch into the next
song.

Charles Chipps belts out songs in the lodge in a loud,
flat, sharp, and powerful voice. He gives off strength in his
song’ while still achieving the same sense, for me, of
humbleness and suffering before the Tankashela that Red
Feather attains with his style. Charles also pours a really
hot lodge. I have been sure that I was on the verge of death
in lodges that Charles poured. To this day, I am curious
about the possibility of brain damage or other' medical
complications in lodges but my curiosity fades with each
lodge. I have never heard of anyone dying in the lodge, you
only think you will. The saving grace in Charles’ lodges is

that there is little or no talking and the rounds go by fast.

The water pourer is in complete control of the timing of
the ceremony. I have never been able tOudiscover a set pattern
to the rounds or "doors" of either Red Feather’s or Charles’
lodges. Maybe when all the singing is done and we have sat

for an immeasurable moment in the steam and suffering, the

87
water pourer will yell, "tiyopa!" - "door!" In English we
yell "open the flap!" Then, as the door is thrown open by the
door keeper, everyone yells together, "Mitakuye Oyasin!" Our
prayers escape with the steam to the west - the direction of
the home of the Tankashelas, the direction the door of the
lodge should face. Light from the day blinds us as it pours
in. Or maybe, the gentle flickering light of the fire
illuminates the inside of the lodge for it is night. Perhaps
the moon is out and full and the world outside is cool, pale,
white and dark blue. The effort of endurance shows on the
faces of the men in the lodge. Maybe there is some talking,
usually some joking about whether or not the lodge was hot
enough. Some men try and lay down in the cramped space or
were already doing so in the dark. Now is the time for
informal lessons. Often, new comers will be allowed to ask
questions and sometimes they will leave before a second round.
If there is a lesson given it could be about the skills being
learned in the lodge: strength through self control,
deprivation, endurance, and prayer; bravery combined with
surrender to suffering: humbleness in suffering before the
Tankashela; the value of life, health and happiness. These
are lessons that we just felt, still feel, and.will feel again
in.moments. The lodge is not so much a place for preaching it
is a place for doing, for "walking your talk," as Charles
loves to say. Outside the door we can see the world that we

live in from a different perspective. The air flowing in is

88

cool. There is sometimes the smell of food cooking. People
laugh around a distant camp fire. Maybe at this time Charles
talks to us about how you must die in the lodge to be reborn
from it. Maybe here he talks to us about suffering to be
humble before the Tankashela. Maybe here he talks to us about
surrendering ourselves to the Tankashela as we will do in the
Sun Dance. I can not recall the words exactly. So often
Charles seems to understand that what he says is not meant to
be a text frozen in words. "Hear me and understand this.
Don’t think about it, just know it."

I scrub my body with some of the sage that I brought. It
smells wonderful and has an astringent quality that, along
with the steam condensed on my body, really gets skin clean
and removes body odor. With limited possibilities for showers
at the very rustic Sun Dance camps, the lodge is a
surprisingly hygienic option. That is of course, unless you
succumb to the strong urge to lay on the always cool Earth.
This invariably results in a coating of grass and mud on the

skin and a tell tale sign of your weakness when you crawl out.

The door is closed again. The glow is now gone from the
rocks and we sit in complete darkness. Having survived one
round you know what to expect in the next. Sitting where I
sit, in the hot spot opposite the door, there was little
relief when the door opened because of the way the rocks

affect the air currents in the lodge. Relief for me comes in

89
knowing that the pause in the ceremony is over and.we are back
under way - closer to the end. There is more singing.
Another song I do not know.

I have been in lodges where there is a round of
individual prayers, usually between songs. The water pourer
establishes a theme, maybe prayers for loved ones, and then
each person in turn, clock-wise always, says their prayer.
This year, there were no such prayers. Probably this is
because only Red Feather and Charles poured lodges. With
them, all prayers said are during songs. The ceremony is
conservative and as traditional as possible. The lodge may go
on to be four rounds long, maybe more, often less. Charles
submitted us to two round lodges of vicious intensity. The
length. of lodges, or number* of rounds, was a 'topic of
discussion one day in the lodge.

Four is an integral cosmological number in Lakota
practice. It seemed to many that it was only sensible to do
a four round lodge. Indeed, most lodges that I have been in
were four rounds. iRed Feather almost always pours four doors.
So in a lodge with Red Feather a man asked why it was that
Charles only poured two rounds the other night. Red Feather
was not really sure but figured that it really was not so
important how many rounds were poured, what mattered was the
first five stones and the honoring song. .After the first five
stones are brought in everything else is optional. However,

four doors of a lodge does allow for patterning the ceremony

 

90

in harmony with other cosmological systems involving fours,
for example: the four directions: the four life stages of
birth, childhood, adulthood, and death; the four seasons; the
four "nations" of humans, white, black, red, and yellow; the
four nations of animals, the four legged, the two legged, the
winged, and those that swim and crawl: and so on. All these
realms can be referred to in the lodge for particular rounds
usually beginning with the basic pattern of the directions and
then moving on up a stack of wheels of cosmology based on the
arrangement of four division laid out like the four
directions. West may be the direction of death, winter, the
color black, the four legged nation, the ancestors, the rain,
all invoked in the final of four rounds of a lodge - the "west
door." Occasionally a different formation within the
orientation of a particular medicine wheel is put in practice.
For example, there is considerable regional variation among
the Lakota of color correspondences to direction, sometimes
west is black, sometimes it is some other color. However, by
running a lodge in four doors the possibility is present to
focus the individual on several corresponding cosmological
levels that are not necessarily related but can be. Again,
this is not required but individuals may make associations on
their own without cues from others. In fact, Red Feather
poured several four door lodges with little or no reference to
the cosmological echoes possible in the structure. Charles

may have had some reason to only do two door lodges. I never

91
got a chance to ask him, nor am I sure that the reason he
would have given me, had he even chosen to, would have been
the same reason at work in the lodge.

It may be possible, if you are conscious enough by the
end of the lodge, to tell that it is near. The dipper scrapes
the bottom of the bucket with a distinct sound when it is
nearly empty. When the water is gone the end is near.
Charles had a technique for the grand finale that was new to
me this year.

The lodge is excruciatingly hot. My sun burn screams
with pain under the assault of the steam. My ears are burning
as are my knees. I try and cover my knees until the backs of
my hands are burning, then I try to cover my ears. The wet,
wilted, sage bundles behind my ears provide little protection
now. Charles is hollering out a long prayer in Lakota most of
which completely escapes my understanding. I know who he is
directing the prayers to, but most of the content is beyond my
limited vocabulary. It is so hard not to focus on the pain I
experience since I am alienated from the language of the
prayer - unable to transport myself into it, along with it.
So difficult not to panic. I try to pray for strength on my
own. It is an exercise of intense concentration on prayer
while letting your body just go. The feeling is still there,
it just ceases to be as important as it was. As I am getting
away from the pain felt by my body and into the strength of my

prayers I hear the sound of the bucket rattling empty on the

92
rock pile and a roar of steam and boiling water. Charles is
on the last words of his prayer. I am brought back to waking
consciousness, almost, by the sound of the bucket. The new,
huge, wave of steam just begins to hit me, the talons of the
eagle it is sometimes called, as Charles’ prayer ends.

"Mitakuye Oyasin! Tiyopa!" yells Charles. There is a
momentary, fearful pause as the fire keeper is slow to react.
"Tiyopa!" yells Charles.

"Mitakuye Oyasin!" we yell in unthinking reaction.
Charles is out of the lodge before I can even focus my eyes.
The heat is at its climax but I stay, somehow, in the frame of
mind and body that allows me to sit with calmness, pride, and
strength as the men near the door scramble to get out. The
world tilts, swells, contracts - my body throbs, thirst burns.
The door keeper urges the first men leaving to keep their
decorum.

"Easy brothers, be strong, move slowly!" One man is
nearly unconscious, laying on the floor. He must be revived
before the rest can leave for we should remain in order.
There is a slight feeling of panic in the men at the end of
the line but the air is already cooling from the open door.
I remain calm feeling proud that I sat up the whole time and
am not in a hurry to leave. I too am light headed, I feel as
if I extend beyond.my skin. The man is revived and crawls out
the door covered in mud mumbling his requisite "Mitakuye

Oyasin." I follow saying the same. Outside the air is cool

93
and the stars are fantastic. It is dark, the moon is not yet
up, and the fire has burned down so we can lay naked on our
towels under the stars without worry of offending the women’s
adopted Lakota modesty. I stand and stumble off behind the
lodge to lay down near my clothes. The stars spin in my hazy
vision. I feel the coolness all over my body. I feel the
pleasure of life. One of the fire keepers brings around a
bucket of water and offers me a ladle full. I sit up. The
water is everything that.water should.be and I feel it pooling
cold and pure in my empty stomach. Even in the darkness I can
see men.moving about and laying around. I lay back down until
the breeze cools my skin to a chill. Then, I rise, still
weak, wipe myself down with my towel, put on my clothes, find
a friend, and walk back to camp.

On the way we stop at another camp. There, in the active
social interaction, the mental changes from the lodge are
subtle, but tangible to me. The gentleness and pleasure of
life is amplified. The young women who offer us cups of water
seem especially beautiful, despite their dirty clothes and
faces, and obvious fatigue from a long day. Their kindness is
warm and deeply appreciated. The conversation around the camp
fire is friendly and caring. The food smells great, and an
offer to share a meager meal is welcome but we should move on
to our own camp.

The stars...the coolness of the air...the moisture in

grass wet on bare feet...the sounds of laughter from other

94
camps. . .thoughts ebb and flow with pure mindless experience of
the evening and fatigue. On the hill where our camp is the
wind urges warmer clothes. The simple experience of being
alive needs, for a while, no improvement. Thirst quenched,
even hunger can be put off for a few minutes of staring into
the fire, then up at the stars, then off into the prairie

hoping to hear coyotes.

Chapter Five:

Heunds, Scars, symbols: the piercing experience

This second chapter of ethnographic example has as its
subject the piercing of Sun Dance. Piercing is a powerful
ritual action that joins the body to»an entire symbolic system
of religion. The resultant scars are an especially powerful
symbol as they contain within them the experience of the
piercing process connected to all that the Sun Dance is,
should be, could be, will be, and was. The scars remain on
the chest of the Dancer for life marking him for all that see
his bared chest, including himself. The scars are an
excellent example of a symbol that has both a physical and a
socially constructed referent, a symbol that is both felt and
known, a symbol that connects the individual’s body'toisociety
and society to the individual’s body.

In this chapter I describe the scars, the processing of
piercing that produces them, and some of their more obvious
practical functions. I also recount my own piercing - hardly
a typical experience yet informative in some very important
ways. I will be subsuming theory to sense in this second
section as I did in the previous chapter on inipi. It is not
intended to communicate carefully constructed ideas with

forced clarity as much as it is intended to make an impression

95

96
worthy of the topic. The theory that I gave in chapter three
guides my exposition - again, analysis is implicit in
description. However, I wait to make the theory and
ethnography specifically linked until the next chapter where

everything is brought together in conclusion.

Sun Dance Scars

I saw'my first Sun Dance scars just before I‘witnessed.my
first Sun Dance. I was waiting to be told what to do to help
out.with the work that needed to be done for the Dance. Since
I was still healing my broken collar bone I could not
participate in.much of the heavy labor expected of men. .A man
walked up to the group I was standing with and began talking
to the men who were in charge. He was obviously friends with
them and at home on this land - unlike me. He had his shirt
off and on his chest above and between his nipples were two
scars, dark red against his tan skin. Despite the Lakota
modesty adopted for the Dance, Sun Dancers, except women, are
expected to go shirtless before the Dance to build up a tan.
This man’s scars were about an half an inch tall and.a quarter
inch.wide. From‘what I now know, I would guess that they were
from Crow Dog’s Dance the year before, but I am not certain.
In any case, the scars were obvious, and not knowing anything
much about the Sun Dance, it took me a while to realize what
they were. Still, they made an impression.

The scars are formed from piercing. At all the Dances I

97
have been to, the cut is made with a scalpel with the blade
changed for each Dancer as a precaution against transmission
of AIDS. .An incision.is made vertically, relative to the axis
of the body, and then, I am told, the blade is pushed under
the skin and the second parallel cut is made on the other side
from inside the skin. The pin is then inserted and the next
cuts made. No anesthetic is used. The cuts are not longer
than three quarters of an inch and never go deeper than the
dermis. I agree with Mails that previous authors assertions
that the muscles of the pectorals were pierced are likely
mistaken. .Azman can hang from the skin of his chest alone for
hours if need be. The resulting completed pierce is basically
a strip of skin, created by two parallel cuts, under which a
pin of various material about one eight tolone quarter inch in
diameter and about four inches long, is inserted. The pin is
then attached to a "harness" which in turn is attached to a
rope that the Sun Dancer tied to the Tree with his prayer ties
on Tree day. When the Sun Dancer "breaks," he pulls against
the rope until the skin that holds the pin tears, usually only
at one end. The flap of skin is then trimmed off and buried
in a bit of red cloth at the base of the tree. What is left
on the chest is a shallow hole in the skin, something like a
very deep scrape might leave. The wound is rubbed with golden
seal and left alone. There is not much bleeding but there is
some. My scars formed over four weeks or so and are still

healing at this date some six months later. The redness of

98
new scar tissue is slowly turning white.

Certainly the pain varies individually. Nearly everyone
describes piercing as painful. However, the piercing occurs
in a ritual context that makes formulating the idea of pain a
bit difficult. Also, the piercing is less traumatic for
veteran dancers of more than two years. I am told by many that
the second year is most terrifying as the Sun Dancer knows
what to expect but has not had time to get used to it. Red
Feather, who must.have at least.twenty-five sets of scars, can
pierce himself. Regardless of the effects of repetition,
there is arguably some pain involved anytime the skin is cut
this deeply, a object forced under it, and then ripped
through. Pain and blood are always part of piercing. It is
my conclusion that this pain, in the context of piercing in
the Sun Dance ritual, is the final element that almost

guarantees a numinous experience.

Piercing Round of the Sun Dance

Somehow I managed to internalize the Oglala philosophy of
Sun Dance that asserts that real Sun Dance requires piercing.
I probably had the option to Dance without piercing but felt
that I would be both avoiding something important because of
fear of pain, and missing something important to the ritual.
Preparation for piercing begins as soon as the Dancer knows he
will pierce. At this point, before the scars even exist,

their meaning is being created.

99

I had to make my own pins for piercing. It is rather an
odd thing to do, carving away at choke cherry sticks and
sanding them, with the thought that they will go through your
chest. There is a certain fearful bravado in the meditation.
Often at the Dance you will see men carving away at small
sticks and then holding them up to their chests imagining
their ultimate fit. A friend, Mike, a Monacan Indian, carved
pins for me from deer antler. They are pins of superior
quality, smooth and strong, that I should use for four years
or more. A Dancer must also acquire a harness and rope.
Traditionally these would be horse hair, and I did see a real
horse hair rope this year. The next best material is natural
fiber rope. I bought mine at a hardware store in Kadoka. The
rope is decorated if the Dancer chooses, so that it can be
identified when it is time to pierce. Many men hang feathers
from their ropes or tie strips of cloth‘with.personal meaning.
I thought about it for a while and decided to be true to
myself and use school colors. I had one section of green and
white for my B.A., one section of green and.white for my M.A.,
and a section of Blue and Gold to represent my goal of a Ph.D.
at Michigan, way up near the tree branches. Conscious, due to
my training perhaps, that I was constructing my meaning of
piercing, I decided to make good use of it. I was also
conscious that each decoration was a prayer and would later
help focus my prayers as I looked up the rope from my piercing

pins to the Tree of Life to the Sky.

100

I Danced the last two days. It entered the Arbor, as
instructed, on the night before the second day. I slept in
the Dancers area until it began to rain hard, then I moved
into the very crowded Dancer’s tipi, which leaked. The other
Dancers most of whom had been there two days already, were
grouchy and un-welcoming. They had endured two nearly
sleepless nights already. In the morning I entered the lodge
with the rest of the male Dancers. On this morning, after the
first five stones were brought in and the lodge warmed a
little, Red Feather discussed piercing. He wanted to know who
had pierced already, and who wanted to do it when. In the
lodge we all know'that piercing, the timing of it, is supposed
to be guided by a "vision." This term has loose
interpretations and may be anything from a spiritual guidance
from hanbleca to simply an inkling about the right timing. I
had no vision for the timing of my piercing yet. Red Feather
said that he knew that many of us had visions of when to
pierce but for those of us who did not, he urged us to do it
today, the third day. Traditionally, the fourth day is the
day of piercing. However, Sun Dancing is popular enough that
if everyone waited until the fourth.day to pierce, it.would.be
a fifth day before it was finished. Piercing on all days is
now common, at least at Crow Dog’s and other Dances that I
have witnessed. So, I knew that I should pierce that day but
which round was still my own choice. During the Dance I

thought occasionally about when to pierce and waited for a

101
vision to help.

Finally, after the long break in the afternoon for
everyone else to eat lunch, I knew it was time - no vision,
just a feeling. I went up to Two Feathers, another veteran
Sun Dancer Helper, and told him I wanted to pierce in the next
round. A few minutes later he gestured to me, talking was
forbidden among Dancers in the Arbor, and painted two circles
on my chest with powdered pipe stone. I was then led by my
sage arm band out to the Tree, turning clock-wise once in the
west gate, where we pulled my rope down and staked it out
where I would dance at the north gate. I returned to the
other Dancers. The round went as usual until I was escorted
out of the circle of Dancers and led to the Tree. While
Dancing I had tried to get my breathing down in
synchronization with the drum Iby blowing' my eagle bone
whistle. I knew that, like breathing control and exertion in
bike racing and running, this helped attain aicertain state of
consciousness - endorphin flow - that would increase my
strength and decrease my pain. .At the tree I was told to pray
to the Tree and the Tankashelas for strength and for the
people. I did. The Tree is the haven for Dancers. If too
weak to Dance we were allowed to go to the Tree, lean on it,
or lay under it if we must, and pray for strength. I prayed
with my head on the back of my hand, palm on the Tree. I felt
the tree moving in the wind, like it was breathing, alive. I

Danced and breathed in time until the Drum began to sing a

102
song that the lead drummer had just composed that summer. I
knew it from singing the first two days, and at a previous
Dance. I sang along proud to know a song new to the veteran
Dancers around me. The buffalo robe was laid out and the
piercing paraphernalia set up. I was led in a circle around
the tree from where I was on the south side to the west side
of the Tree. My crown was removed and I handed someone my
pins - I was proud of them. I was laid down on the buffalo
robe. The Sun Dance Mother put a bunch of fresh sage in my
mouth and they urged me to hold still, I was still trying to
dance and sing. I held still trying to relax and just let the
anticipated pain flow. My pulse rate had to be pretty high.
The Sun Dance Mother soothingly stroked my forehead and kindly
spoke to me. "Be brave honey," she said over and over. "Just
relax. Be strong, be brave, honey." The Sun Dance Mother,
independent of her office, is a powerful, powerful woman who
I had previously considered to be gruff, self-important, and
generally unconcerned with anyone except those in her own
camp. The moments of piercing and her genuinely sympathetic
attention to me totally changed my opinion. I do not know who
pierced me. 'The Sun Dance Mother’s hand kept.covering my eyes
as she caressed my forehead holding my head down firmly with
her other hand. A man held my legs down. I felt the Piercer
scrub my skin with sage. The pain of the first cut into my
skin was hot and precise then it expanded, deep and harsh as

the scalpel penetrated to pierce the other side. The second

103

cuts were made with he same hot, wet pain of slicing followed
by the tearing punch of penetration. The pins were pushed
through - an expansion of the pain, colder, deeper. All of
this took maybe a minute. I was given a hand up and heaved
quickly into a standing position. My sage crown was replaced.
I remember thinking, as the pain faded into a warmth, that it
was not so bad.- broken collar bones are much.worse. Everyone
involved was careful to guide me through the motions to insure
that I did not fall or stumble off. I was confidently lucid
but also still in a very aroused state. I was led out to my
staked out rope. I held the rope up, careful not to let it
touch the ground. A helper fastened my harness on and hooked
me up to my rope, to the tree, to the earth, to the sky... I
listened to the drum a moment and then began dancing to the
beat blowing my whistle. I let the weight of the rope out of
my hand and onto my pins.

I can not to justice in words to what I felt. The pain
of piercing was nothing to the feeling of weight the rope had
as it pulled against my skin. It really, really, hurt deeply.
In that instant my mind split. At that moment, I knew, felt
with my entire being, what it felt like to be the Earth. I
looked at the Tree which was reflected in the trees of the
ravine behind the Arbor, the grasses of the prairie hills to
the east, the sky, the clouds, memories of the buffalo killed
two days earlier that I helped skin and butcher. The earth

.gives Herself up like I did here and it hurt every time we

104

took something from her, pulled sage, cut a tree of life,
killed an animal, but.it.was willing and loving. Tears rolled
from my eyes. Images of soil and roots, leaves and water
tumbled through my mind. At the same time, some faithfully
anthropological part of my consciousness made note of the
experience, instantly tracing it out to the conditioning of
the past weeks and year. I knew that I had been primed for
this vision, that the pieces had been placed in me ready for
this unifying experience to make it all come together in this
brilliantly impressive moment. It almost ruined the
experience for me except that what I felt.was so impressive as
to transcend even the science I knew to be true. Science
could explain the mechanics of what got me to this point but
science has no tears for the Earth, no ability to link me, my
whole being to the whole being of life on Earth, except
through this participation. Science could not give me this
intimate moment of communication with the Earth, a whole
feeling of Herself pouring through me.

I leaned back against the rope knowing it would hurt bad
but not wanting to give in to the pain. Like the lodge, power
came from embracing it. I knew, from watching, what kind of
Sun Dancer I wanted to be. Since I was here, I was going to
do it right, make mwaife and.supporters, even Charles, proud,
prove myself. The rope raised up as I leaned back, dancing
and blowing my whistle. As the ecstacy of my vision, and my

analysis of it, wore off, I began to remember the people

105
dancing behind me in support from my camp. Some had been out
all day waiting for the round when I would pierce, send my
power through their prayers. Soon, the two of us who were
pierced.were motioned.to make our four approaches to the tree.
As we moved forward the weight of the rope dropped off and the
pain eased. We touched the tree and prayed. Another Dancer,
four days, was at the base of the tree having a real hard
time. I tried to give him strength through prayer and
example. We were motioned away from the tree. When I
released the rope from my hands again the pain, this time
familiar, no vision, but I leaned back hard. I tried this
time to make the Tankashelas proud. If "white" boys were
going to do the Sun Dance, I wanted the original Dancers to be
proud of the ones with whom it was now shared. Back to the
Tree. I pray for a good break, the strength and bravery to do
it in a good way. Back away from the tree, leaning into the
pain again Dancing hard. Back to the Tree. It moves,
undulates solidly in the wind. More prayer. Prayers spoken
out loud for the Dancer collapsed at the base of the tree.
Back out to the circle, the volume of the drumming and singing
building, the energy of the Dance building to the small climax
coming. Leaning into pain all the way now, if I break too
soon now it is because I was Dancing hard, I was brave and
strong. But I don’t. The final trip to the Tree. Strong
prayers for a good break. Strong prayers for the people, for

healing the nation, for my relatives, my wife’s family.

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Prayers for Crisca, for'mentors, for teachers, for the Chipps.
The final prayer, the lesson I take from the Tree: "let me be
brave enough to see the strength inside me." Backing away
from the tree I know that the break will hurt but will release
me. I want to break good, not to rush it, not to struggle.
I let the rope go from my hand, it hits the ground briefly and
then lifts as the pain of connection sets in.warm, flooding my
body, I relax and let it flow in me, I Dance backwards slowly
but powerfully leaning hard. I remember my vision of the
Earth - She can not break. I remember the ancestors who value
the strong warriors, honorable men. I hit the end of the rope
it is brought tight, my skin stretches unimaginably far. I
concentrate on the Tree, thinking stops. I just lean harder
and harder, dancing, ready to fall when the break comes. The
pain is beyond pain now into sensations of light and heat.
Flags blow in the Tree, my prayer ties are up there, the
leaves flash in the wind. My vision begins to dim. SNAP!
SNAP! My piercings give way one right after the other. In a
haze, I see the ropes fly toward the Tree and then lay slack
as I stumble backwards and am caught. I worry for a moment
for my pins. The relief is wonderful, the weight of the Tree,
Earth, and Sky are gone, but so is the power. I feel weak,
small, human, light, but victorious, elated. I have danced
the Sun Dance. I have pierced. I am rotated clock-wise and
taken to the tree. There my piercings are trimmed of loose

flesh- more pain but quick, easy, fearless. My hand is

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shaken. Some helpers say thank you. I am danced to my place
in the circle. The Dance goes on for the rest of the day and
the next. The piercings are sore, tender, but there is no
bruising, no tears. I was well pierced and broke well.

In my sleeping bag that night in the tipi I feel the
tenderness of fresh cuts but it is not bad. It rains hard.
Some men hold their mouths open under the streaming leaks for
water. Others collect it in plastic and cups around the
edges. Outside, I know there is a huge piece of plastic
collecting water. In the morning, after talking to two Viet
Nam vets smoking cigarettes in the shelter of the outhouse, I
plunge my whole face into a pool and drink the ice cold water

fresh from the Sky and the Thunder beings.

wounds, Scars, Symbols

After the Dance I stayed at the Chipps’ for several days
hiking in the Badlands and generally just hanging out. I was
in no real hurry to leave until the lure of swimming became so
strong in the oppressive, shadeless heat of our camp, that we
decided to go to Rose Bud. My travelling partner and
ethnobotany/ethno-ornithology assistant, Dan, had.become good
friends with Pedro Red Hawk, the singer for every Dance we
went to that summer. We decided to visit him at his home in
Antelope on Rose Bud, just outside of Mission. Rose Bud,
Pedro’s wife told us one day over baloney and white bread

sandwiches, is the civilized reservation when compared to Pine

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Ridge. Rose Bud also has abundant places to swim. The first
day we travelled to Mission we went swimming at a beautiful
creek with an excellent rope swing. While we were there, we
were joined by some of the local Lakota who were very nice and
acted like there was nothing the least bit unusual about two
white guys swimming in this out of the way place. We talked
about the history of the swing, decades old, work on the
reservation, weather and other things. A young child brought
with him a water bottle handed out at an early spring mountain
bike race in central Michigan last year - my last race before
my accident. Maybe three hundred people attended. They did
not know how they came to have it. When the topic of us being
at a Sun Dance came around, I realized that my fresh piercing
wounds were obvious. No one mentioned it. Neither of the men
we talked to had danced - no scars except from stabbing. It
could have been an awkward moment but was not.

The act of taking a shirt off has an entirely new aspect
to it. In a recent movie filmed on Pine Ridge, Thunder Heart,
an old man, a medicine man in the story, has his shirt ripped
open by police during a raid to arrest an AIM member. He has
scars. He is not just an actor. In the lodge the first day
I joined the Dance, while they asked who was a first year
dancer, Red Feather looked at my chest, and pointed me out to
Two Feathers.

At a cocktail party for a local poet that I attend when

I return in the fall, old friends of the family ask, "oh let

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me see your scars!" They know little of the Sun Dance, but
scars speak to them. I carry the weight of two worlds. One
world sees the scars as objects to be studied, until now,
largely divorced of their spiritual meaning. Or, perhaps, as
in this last example, they are an exotic oddity like nipple
piercing and tatoos - modern primitivism, the latest trend.
Maybe, they are a mixture of both. In the other world, they
have meaning that is known, not invented - they are Wakan,
they remind me of my vision, my sacred path. I feel uneasy
pulling down the collar of my t-shirt to display my spiritual
marks.

At the Dance I prayed to the Tankashelas to make them
proud, does this ruin it, do I shame them? Do I say, in the
company of agnostics, poets, "my scars are sacred." Is either
one really true? I danced as a scientist looking for the
mechanics of belief. Belief I got, and the mechanics I
understand but the belief doubts the validity of the science
as ultimate truth and the science doubts the veracity, the
verity, of the vision in its own terms. A friend of mine who
dances told.me one day about how he is always careful to cover
his scars with a shirt at the gym while lifting weights. He
does not want to face the explanations, the judgements. For
the All Nations Dancer, the "white" boy, or whatever color,
the scars carry meaning in two worlds, one of fear, scorn, and
ridicule, another of honor, sacrifice, and tradition. This is

an element common, perhaps, with all Sun Dancers, except.those

110
who are Tankashelas. One of the last things Charles told me
before I left was that people would think I was crazy. He
also told me that many times, I would just have to sit on the
floor and be, think, pray, for hours. In this Nation, today,
the meaning of a Sun Dance scar is unknown, waiting to be
formed with each person met with one’s shirt off. From
talking to other Dancers, I know'that.the struggle to maintain
the spiritual integrity that the ritual and.elders demand, can
be difficult and lonely once the Dancer leaves the Chipp’s

Land.

Chapter Six:

Closure

In the previous three chapters Iigave the reader’a theory
for analysis and two ethnographic sketches structured in terms
of that analysis. I left the theory largely implicit in those
two'ethnographic chapters to preserve some of the sense of the
rituals, some of the aesthetic atmosphere that is so important
to understanding the Sun Dance. In this conclusion, I briefly
make the operation of the theory I laid out obvious in
example. I return to inipi, piercing and scars. Following
this review of theory and ethnography, I explore the light it
may bring to both historical and contemporary Sun Dance. I
return to the theory to review it and bring it into a unified
form. In light of the review of these elements of this
thesis, I offer one reason why I believe Sun Dance has a
growing number on non-Native American practitioners. Finally,
I reflect on the work of this thesis in closure and try to
restore some of the natural beauty and meaning of the Sun
Dance that is stripped away by the narrow and very analytical

focus of this thesis.

Inipi in Explicit Analysis

111

112

As is required before entering the Sun Dance, we must
first go to the sweat lodge. It is here that the fundamental
"skills" for the Sun Dance are learned. Indeed, as I have
argued, and will demonstrate again most explicitly, inipi
during the four days of purification, is a ceremony that
teaches the body as well as the mind. Furthermore, what the
body learns reflects, in undeniable physical form, key
ultimate sacred postulates and values derived from them. The
”language" of inipi is one of physical symbols and symbol
systems that not only mirrors the spoken discourse of those
symbols and systems, but often transports individuals into
numinous states further validating the postulates it enlivens.

Let us take only one example and explore the richness of
this process. Now, as soon as I attempt to isolate just one
variable, I find myself having to qualify that goal for as I
have tried to show tacitly, we are dealing with webs of
meaning. Let us just begin anyway, with suffering - a key
concept at work in inipi. Suffering is linked with the
ultimate sacred postulate that there are Lakota ancestors,
Tankashelas, who are sapient and active, though not corporal.
Charles says, in the lodge, that the ancestors want us to be
humble before them and this requires suffering. Suffering is
then induced in the lodge through heat, steam, and all their
related effects. Suffering, therefore, becomes not only an
idea, but a lived experience. Once we are suffering, the

tankashelas are willing to hear our prayers.

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Until now, I left un-analyzed the activity of praying so
that it could be seen mostly in its own sense. At this point
I am willing to put it under the knife. Prayer is linked
tightly to suffering for one prays as one suffers. Prayer is
an intense inward concentration of thought and emotion that
has as its focus, in this case, an "outside audience," the
ancestors. This audience is due to an ultimate sacred
postulate - a feature of a social symbolic system. This
postulate, the ancestors, is brought to mind and made
operative in an atmosphere of severe physical stimulation.
The combination has a unique result. Through this effort of
concentration, a certain relief from physical suffering is
possible. This relief is hardly mundane, however, for it
comes within the context of suffering and prayer - a whole
body experience also involving the mind and language
abilities. Add to this just one important derivative of the
ultimate sacred postulate of ancestors: that if you suffer
genuinely and pray hard enough for strength to overcome that
suffering. it may be granted. Suddenly, we have an experience
of the numinous - the apprehension of the divine. The un-
falsifiable ultimate sacred postulate of the existence of
active ancestors is given proof in the strength to endure
suffering, achieved through prayer in inipi. Prayers are
answered. Most importantly, this is not just an intellectual
exercise but one that involves somatic and affective

sensations as well. One could say that when prayers are

114
answered the power of the ancestors is felt. Indeed, I have
heard of ancestors being seen in lodges. There are areas
outside the lodge where payers are answered as well.

Marriages are repaired, children healed, and objects found.

Worship in the lodge involves the whole human being thus
making what is learned and known both bodily and intellectual,
often involving attainment of the numinous which can validate
the very premises of the practice. Suffering is just one
condition of spiritual experience in inipi that enlivens an
ultimate sacred postulate.

If we return to contemplate the more complex illustration
presented in my previous ethnographic sketch, we can see that
this process is in action on many levels. For example, song
is a physical activity with tremendous capacity for expression
of affect, which I argued is both bodily and.mental as well as
nondiscursive. The discursive lyrics of songs communicate,
and often establish, ultimate sacred postulates. Through the
combination of inipi conditions and song, it is possible to
link ultimate sacred postulates found in lyrics to numinous
states achieved while singing. The very existence of the
lodge is a result of the ancestors, who "told us to do things
this way," and one prays to them‘within this structure of long
tradition. Suffering is not the only theme either. Healing,
strength, humility, purification, tradition, community,

manhood, gathering of spiritual power, and others are all both

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subjects of discourse in the lodge and enlivened through
ritual activity, and.thus incorporated into the participant as
well as learned "rationally.” There is a vast array of
symbols, ultimate sacred postulates, and interpretations
derived from them, to be communicated in inipi and it does so
with particular excellence given its nature to make discursive
but abstract notions physical, undeniable, and possibly
numinous.

Sweat lodge is a rapidly spreading form of worship that
is very attractive to large numbers of people across North
America. Charles travels year round to build and pour lodges
throughout the world. There is more to the attraction of
inipi than just this process of whole being involvement that
I have discussed above: however, I feel that this is at the
core of inipi’s spread. People may want to go to a lodge to
experience Native American culture or worship in a form of
Mother Earth religion. What they experience when they get
there is potentially profoundly engaging. Even before the
lodge begins there is a blend of environment and spiritual
attitude unique in a world of Judao-Christian practice. There
is a fire with its sounds, heat, smell of wood smoke, and
flames to gaze into. ‘The sky above is visible as is, perhaps,
the Sun or Moon. The natural environment surrounds the
participant, providing the very things one holds sacred, to
contemplate in their reality. Many of the symbols used in

inipi, especially those of ultimate sacred postulates,

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subjects and objects of prayer, have physical referents that
are actual, fundamental, objects in daily life as well as in
spiritual practice. The result makes the objects of worship5
most real, and real objects the subject of spiritual thought
and ritual process. There is little arbitrariness in the
symbols of inipi. In a world of lies, deceit, and
advertising, the immediate, tangible, whole being experience
of inipi, can be profoundly attractive and intensely

satisfying.

Piercing in Explicit Analysis

Now let us examine the physicality of symbols, and the
bodily connection and incorporation of symbol systems, in a
second example - piercing. First, it should be recalled that
a great deal of preparation goes into the moments of piercing.
The lessons of inipi are a crucial precursor to the
experience. Strength, endurance of suffering, prayer,
endurance of thirst, all these skills and more are learned in
inipi and taken to a another level of intensity in Sun Dance.

The Sun Dancer has up to a year to prepare for the Dance and

 

5 I use the term "worship" here as I heard it used in
practice. It is intended to communicate a sense of awe,
reverence, and respect for natural objects that many find to
be lacking in Christian faith. The term for some
anthropologists has something of a derogatory tone, recalling
disdain for the primitive prostration before the wrong deity
such as found in the reports by Dorsey. For many people at
the Sun Dance, the return to a sacred and humble relationship
with the Earth, Sky, ancestors, and others is aicareful effort
to correct something erroneously absent in most Christian
practice.

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work with the symbolic potential of all the regalia. During
the Dance, new symbols are invoked, new focalizations for
meaning provided, all ultimately open ended yet also pointing
to each other in a web that can be endlessly traveled. New
ritual processes are introduced. and. enacted. that. recall
previous practices, renewing and expanding their meaning while
embodying new information and new opportunities to make
meaning.

Piercing is a tremendous use of physical symbols and
human bodies. I described the feeling of piercing, and its
potential for the numinous. However, I only previously
alluded to the connection of the Sun Dancer and the other
"beings" to which he is linked. The-body, obviously, is
pierced, and thus physically, actually, undeniably bound to
the symbolic system. Nearly all the elements of this system
are direct physical referents. The pins connect the human to
the rope, the rope to the Tree of life. The Tree of Life is
itself an intricate web of meanings and further focalizations.
For instance, it contains the prayer ties of the Sun Dancer,
550, plus five. The Dancer thus, has 555 prayers on the tree,
along with those of others Dancers, along with flags for the
seven directions, along with the effigies of buffalo and man.
The Tree was cut down by the Dancers, carried by the Dancers,
and raised in place by the Dancers. In effect, a social
relationship»exists between this Tree and the Dancer. Now, he

is bound to it, connected without doubt to it. In turn, the

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Tree is set in the Earth, where the flesh from offerings and
the piercing of the Dancer, will be buried. The Tree itself
is already of the Earth. The Tree also reaches the Sky. The
Sun Dancer is thus bound to both the plain of the Earth with
four directions and the vertical axis of Earth and Sky. In
the Sky are the Thunder Beings, the Winged Messengers, the
wind, the Moon, and the Sun. All these things are visible,
tangible, and readily contemplated as well as experienced
sensually during the course of the Sun Dance. During
piercing, the Sun Dancer is physically, spiritually,
symbolically, and socially, linked to all of creation. Each
link in this huge chain of meaning is in turn linked to
others.

The potential for making meaning of the immense symbolic
web of piercing exceeds summarization or interpretation.
Indeed, as one’s mind attempts to contemplate the Sun Dance
during practice, as one’s body feels it, it is quite possible
to realize that the meaning of the Sun Dance, and life itself,
escapes complete understanding. It assert that this
realization that the grandeur of both life and human
interpretation of it through cosmology and religion are beyond
the scope of intelligibility of one person, is a numinous
experience in itself. There is something powerful in seeing
the limits of one’s mind. In the face of such magnitude of
meaning, certainly'mysterious in its extent, one clings to the

small pieces of meaning that one understands. Wakan Tanka,

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the Great Mystery, is consciously joined during piercing, and
during this connection, one receives a vision, a small portion
of the totality of existence, to give manageable meaning to
life. Paradoxically, to grasp momentarily the Great Mystery,
is to understand perhaps that its meaning is un-intelligible.
Here, possibly, my interpretation of wakan Tanka is as skewed
by contemporary New Age infusions of Eastern Religions and
philosophies in Woptura Sun Dance, as previous authors or Sun
Dances have been affected by Christianity.

The Sun Dance is quite a unification for the Sun Dancer.
Discourse, action, music, feeling, spirituality, and more, are
brought into a harmonious flow of ritual where each level
parallels and enriches the other. Inipi, we should be
reminded, is even part of the Sun Dance. Indeed, lest one
forget the lessons of the lodge, there is an inipi every
morning before dancing and every evening when it is done. 'The
inipi makes the day’s Sun Dancing seem easier, the day’s Sun
Dancing makes the inipi seem easier. In inipi, ideas to
contemplate during the day’s Dance are offered by the water
pourer, often a leading Sun Dance helper. Slowly, over the
course of the Sun Dance, the world.becomes redrawn in terms of
the suffering, the endurance, the spirituality, of the Sun
Dance. When it is over, the suffering ends, the thirst ends,
the hunger ends, the spirituality lingers, the vision guides,

the scars heal but remain to remind.

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Scars

The soars as a lasting and product, a permanent symbol
upon the body, have the ability to invoke the entire
experience for the Dance as well as any other related
experience or idea that can be associated with the scars. In
the sense of symbols, the scars are the piercing. From my
description of the piercing, it should.be obvious that this is
an inscription of cultural symbol systems into the body of the
Sun Dancer. The inscription operates on.as many levels as the
Sun Dance and the scars are as highly complex a symbol as the
Sun Dance is a ritual. Yet, the scars freeze the Dance in
time and distill it down to a pair of symbols on the chest.
At one time the scars are a mark of bravery, strength,
endurance, sanctity, sacrifice, and membership among many
other possible meanings. The scars are a mark of the
spirituality of the Sun Dancer. Scars indicate a man who has
been unified with the Earth and Sky, who has maybe had a
vision, who has spiritual power, who has given his flesh for
the people, who can perhaps heal. But this is an outside view
of the scars. From the inside, the same things as above are
true, but the meaning extends deeply into the personal. The
scars to the man who owns them, are a reminder of experience
of Dancing. The man knows after the Dance that he can face
days without food or water, that he can endure pain, that he
can surrender himself to the authority of elders and

ancestors, and that he can endure suffering for the good of

121
the people. He does not know these things because he was told
them, he knows them because he did them. And while he did
them, he touched the divine, he felt the power of the Great
Spirit in him and all things, he received a vision that may
guide his life, he began to understand the meaning of all
things in a way so powerful that he may never fully describe
its While these things are known to the properly enculturated
observer, they are incorporated by the Sun Dancer. The man
is bound to a common set of socially held beliefs, values,
ethics, and.the like through the invariant practice of ritual,
and comes to hold those fiercely as his own for he not only
knows them but feels them, but he does so in his own way. The
Sun Dance scars say all this to him and those who see his

bared chest, and understand the Sun Dance.

History’s warriors and Contemporary Sun Dancers

The power of Sun Dance, if we regard it historically, is
somewhat lost on contemporary practitioners. The spiritual
growth, the experienceeof the numinous, the sense of community
and tradition are all important. However, very briefly
casting ourselves back two hundred years we see some of the
amazing effects of the Sun Dance. The pain and suffering
become more intelligible. Today, participants in All Nations

Sun Dances leave the thirst and hunger behind at the end of

122
the Dance“, unlikely to experience it again outside of
situations over which they have some control - like fasting
during vision quest. On the Plains before contact, hunger and
thirst were more common and hardship more life threatening.
Wounds from battle were likely. To have these experiences
produced under controlled and highly sanctified conditions
would be of great benefit. One’s first wounds of battle come
not from ones enemies but from one’s elders, friends, and
future warrior’s society members in sacred ceremony. They are
associated not so much.with chaos, panic, fear, war, blood and
terror as they are with the order of one’s people and one’s
religion. The first wounds "of battle" lead to a vision, to
a sacrifice that renews the Earth. Bravery, strength,
sacrifice, duty to one’s people, the help of the Tankashelas,
sanctity, honor, and.eommunity approval are cut into the body,
poured into the man through his sacred connection with the
Earth and Sky through the Tree of life. These things he
carries into battle living more than knowing, his very breath,
his hunger, his thirst, his fear far from home, are sacred and
opportunities for prayer and increased power. For a man who
can live as a warrior for his people, the Sun Dance should be

a life defining ritual in ways we can only appreciate through

 

‘ Native American still experience hunger and
malnutrition on the reservation. Many non-native Sun Dancers
are poor and may themselves be hungry on occasion. However,
as they are not part of a hunting community, the problem of
hunger is a different one than for the Lakota of the Great
Plains before U.S. expansion.

123
imagination today.

In contemporary Sun.Dance, the warrior element of the Sun
Dance is muted. In its place are themes that still echo
traditional ones but. have relevance to :modern concerns:
healing from drugs, alcohol and illness: reverence for the
Earth. Perhaps the Sun Dance we see in Dorsey and Walker is
as much a product of its time as today’s? At the time of
those field studies, the Lakota had just been forced onto the
Reservations after surprisingly successful resistance to
United States expansion. The Lakota people had been engaged
in constant.warfare with sporadic engagements for generations
against the United States and other nations of Native
Americans. Perhaps the theme of war was necessarily most
compelling for the Lakota. If anthropologists had attended
Sun Dances another century earlier, if they existed, perhaps
other themes would have prevailed - something to do with the
effigies of buffalo and man hung in the Tree. Even today,
however, the bravery, strength, and tolerance for pain
expected of a warrior are valued in a Sun Dancer. For Native
Americans attempting to hold their traditional culture
together and return pride, power, and resistance to their
Lakota experience, the continuation of a warrior ethic makes
sense. For the Sun Dancers of European descent at the Chipp’s
Dance what does it do?

One answer that I want to offer, is that it need not do

anything. The lessons of the inipi transfer to the Sun Dance

124
but the warrior aspect of the Sun Dance need not be to a
purpose. Some men will use it, others will not. Stan, one of
my key sources, does not really express any of the warrior
ethic. He is looking for the shamanistic side of the Sun
Dance, the visions, the spiritual discipline. These.are themes
as traditional as war. The warrior skills are internalized
but not connected to his personal system of meaning in the way
that the more "purely" spiritual aspects of the Dance are.
The piercing does not prepare him for the violence of the
enemy, it connects him with creation, with the Great Mystery.
The symbolic system of the Sun Dance will be fully
internalized by all participants but only some of it will
become significant to the individual depending upon that
person’s predispositions. later, perhaps some other
experience*will recall some forgotten portion.of the Sun Dance
and that too will become meaningful. Another informant of
mine values the warrior ethic of the Sun Dance while
emphasizing that he is a "spiritual warrior." What really
matters, is that we realize that the Sun Dance is different
for every Dancer, but at the same time, similar enough so that

all share common experiences and agree to certain meanings.

Conclusions on Theory
I want.to»draw in, as tight.as possible, the relationship

between the bodily learning through ritual, and the numinous

125

validation of ultimate sacred postulates. The numinous, I
have argued is not just an intellectual experience but one of
the whole human being. Thus, when this numinous experience
provides undeniable evidence of the un-falsifiable ultimate
sacred postulate, it does so not on just a cognitive level
that could be debated or doubted, but on a tangible, sensory
level that is nearly beyond question. Can one doubt the pain
of piercing or the refreshment of water? Then how can one
doubt the empathetic experience of feeling what the Earth
feels as given in vision during piercing? In the end, what
you believe about your religion is not just how you think
about it but how you feel about it and perhaps more
importantly, how you think about it when you feel about it.

Sun Dance does not.have as algoal giving each participant
the same vision or the same indoctrination. Lakota
spirituality does not work that way - it has much room for
individual variation. It does make those individual visions
intelligible in common terms that all participants, and the
community, can share in after the fact. For example, my
individual vision may be something that I share with few
people, it is highly personal and the custom that I have
learned at the Sun Dance allows me the option of letting it
remain so. IHowever, the entire construction of meaning of the
Sun Dance does not revolve around my personal interpretation
of the experience. Before, after, or while I am Dancing,

Charles may be saying to the observers, some of whom.are there

126

to support me, that "the Dancers suffer so that the people may
live," or, "the nation, the people, will be healed" or any
number of themes that are spoken during the Sun Dance. The
point is, while my vision and experience are individual, my
Dancing is also a sacrifice for the oyate, the people. They
look on. Those who support me look at my piercing and my
breaking. They see the suffering, the blood, the wounds. We
share friendships, love, food, water, respect, and caring. My
pain evokes sympathy and empathy. This is combined.with their
prayer for my benefit and for others. It is entirely possible
for onlookers, many of whom may have been in the hot sun for
days dancing around the Arbor, to attain a numinous state as
well. At the very least, they feel for the Sun Dancer, share
in some associative way, the experience of Dancing.
Furthermore, they see his sacrifice and his commitment to the
ultimate sacred postulates at work in the ritual. The Sun
Dancers belief, through their relationship to him, can become
their belief as well. It is not just a statement of belief
either, it is sacrifice in the name of the people, to the
complex of religion/spirituality. It is proof in pain, blood,
thirst, and hunger.

I was a bit surprised by the amount of appreciation that
people showed to me for Dancing. In trying to cope with the
intensity of personal experience, I nearly lost sight of the
aspects of ritual Turner calls "communitas."(Turner, 1969)

Communitas peaks at the end of the Sun Dance when the liminal

127

state of the Dancers draws to a close finalized in the last
inipi following which the Dancer rejoins his or her friends
and family. Together they share his or her Dance canupa,
sacred pipe, and then line up for the feast. At the feast I
was impressed with the comments and hugs by "my" supporters,
other supporters, and other Dancers. To many who supported my
Dance, and to others, I was dancing for their benefit. To
what extent, I may never know, and it is not so important that
I do really, any more than it is required of them that they
understand my experience in the Arbor. Still, the
participation of a Sun Dancer enmeshes him or her in a some
community responsibility. At the end of the Dance, the
Dancers file around in the circle of the Arbor to heal the
people who watch and support. The only act of breaking the
spiritual barrier between Dancers and Supporters comes in a
gesture of healing and an introduction of the new
possibilities of roles for healing, guidance, and proper use
of new spiritual power for the oyate.

What needs to be healed during this end part of the
ritual of Sun Dance is unknown to the Dancer for there is no
speaking. Further, the Dancer’s specialties in power to heal
are unknown to the supporter. As the long line of Dancers
slowly'move by the supporters, the feelings of joy, gratitude,
happiness and.others flood.both lines. That healing is taking
place is known. What that healing is, is left to the

individual to interpret. One expects, however, to look for

128
changes. It may be the surge of feeling during the moment, or
it may be the illness of a distant relative suddenly cured.
The domains that the focalization of healing seeks to make
meaning of are not limited clearly in the Sun Dance and thus
the individual is left to make meaning of this "symbol" on his
or her own. In this way, the meaning maker will find what
satisfies the quandary best and thus make the most of a
spiritual opportunity. It is not so important in the Sun
Dance that people have exactly the same experiences. Even
carefully constructed in ritual, those deeply internal
sensations and memories will remain largely unknowable to
perhaps even themselves. What matters is that there are
common terms in which to speak of powerful personal
experiences with commonalities. Those common terms stem from
ultimate sacred postulates, their interpretations, and the
uniform action of ritual. Sun Dance makes unverifiable
ultimate sacred postulates physical, obvious, and undeniable
while placing them not only in the mind but in the body in a
highly meaningful, personal web of meaning that involves

discursive elements held mutually by the community.

All Nations Dancing: One answer to "why?”

In the 1990’s, in the United States, many people find
little in their world to believe in, to trust. Many people
who come to the Sun Dance have experienced disillusionment

with important aspects of their "indigenous" culture. They

129

cannot believe in the Church of their childhood, or the
economic exploitation around them deemed by some many to be
"natural" or even "God’s great plan." Governments are caught
in lies, churches smack of deceit, parents are found
untrustworthy, drugs and alcohol further disillusionment. In
the quest for something that makes life meaningful, some
people have come across the Sun Dance, or perhaps, just the
inipi near their home town. However, Sun Dance is not just
for the disillusioned. Some come to it from aicuriosity about
Native American tradition. In it they find the same
convincing, engaging system of symbols, belief, and bodily
experience that satisfies those who are plagued with doubt.
Regardless of what brings people to the Sun Dance, the ritual
seems to impress upon nearly everyone there, its legitimacy
and ability to represent truth about the world. New Dancers
pledge every year.

However, this is only one aspect of Sun Dance that
attracts and enthralls. I do not wish to give the idea that
there is only some magic trick of conditioning and.oognitively
convincing symbolism of physical referents. The Sun Dance has
strong aesthetic qualities to it. The values and directives
explicated during the long week of ritual have their own worth
and appeal. The community, friendships, and memories formed
are cherished. The celebration of a ritual once aggressively
oppressed is a welcomed return of respected tradition. The

Imeaning of the Sun Dance far transcends the one small piece I

130
have presented in the cold, mechanical, language of analysis.
While this action of ritual and symbolism of validating the
ultimate sacred postulate with the numinous no doubt works for
many people at the Dances, it must be remembered that the
ultimate sacred postulates themselves, as well as the
numinous, must be attractive as well. It is the whole Sun
Dance, the experience of being outside on the Plains for over
a week, the songs, the smells, the prayers, the friends, the
teachings, the traditions, and on and on, that make the Sun
Dance what it is. The operation of the creation of belief
that I have explicated here is only there to make real what
people want to make real. Sun Dance, like every other
religion. or ritual in .America, competes for' worshipers.
Belief, commitment, the acceptance of truth, is.a crux, in the
long spiritual quest for understanding for many people. Most
of all the people at the Sun Dance seem to want a beautiful

world to live in - social, natural, spiritual.

Closing This Work

The All Nations Sun Dance of the Chipps provided a unique
opportunity for anthropological study of the Sun Dance
tradition. A.great deal of previous work has been done on Sun
Dance — enough to prompt Deloria to ask, "how many additional
studies are going to be needed, or wanted, on the Oglala Sun
dance?" He goes on to offer an important line of thinking:

Enthusiasts for these kinds of repetitive
studies are often people who have recently

131

entered the field and have the energy and zeal

of a newcomer. For those who are acquainted

with the subject and the literature of the

field, each new study that plows old ground is

boring and stirs up considerable resentment.

(Deloria, 1991:461)

I hope this work is neither boring nor plowing old
ground. I have purposefully avoided a structural study of the
Sun Dance as has been done previously. Further, the Sun Dance
that I studied is remarkable in that it involves a large
number of non-Native Americans. While this may be the object
of scorn by some, I make no judgements about the Sun Dance, I
simply study it. Whether or not All Nations Dances are
acceptable to this or that community is largely a political
decision that I want little part of and certainly will not
accept responsibility for making. I think that something new
has been contributed just by noting that people of non-Native
American backgrounds find Oglala tradition to be particularly
meaningful and important in their lives not.as.a passing fancy
but as major commitment and component of their spirituality.
Charles makes it very clear that the Sun Dance he is
intercessing is not a religious ritual but a spiritual event.
I take this to mean that the Sun Dance can be somewhat
separated from the complete Oglala canon and appreciated on
its own. It can be combined with other elements of other
religions into a personal spirituality for each person who
comes. Indeed, there is often talk of karma and other non-

Native American spiritual elements at the Sun Dance. It-is

not necessary for everyone at the Woptura Sun Dances to

132

"convert to Lakota." It is necessary for everyone to respect
the Oglala tradition, perform the ritual according to strict
standards, and to pray and perform in earnest. Charles and
many of the people who come are interested in unifying people,
not segregating them by custom and tradition. This is not
always easy and people who refuse to conform to the
expectations of the Dance may be asked to leave but more often
do so on their own. Charles opens a very traditional ritual
upito very contemporary conditions and does the best he can to
be true to the Tankashelas’ wishes, the needs of the people,
and the diversity of individuals that bring their own
influences and beliefs to the Dance.

This openness at the Sun Dance, and the diversity of
participants, allows the anthropologist to access parts of the
Dance that previous authors seem to be unable or unwilling to
apprehend. I was able to Dance the Sun Dance and be
relatively unremarkable. I was highly different from.many of
the other participants in that my anthropological training
made most of the workings of the Dance obvious to me in ways
they were probably not for others. I can not believe. I did
have what could be called a spiritual experience. I did have
a vision, as I described. As I also noted, it was instantly
subjected to the self-analysis inherent in years of university
training in religion, ritual, and symbolism. Thus, my Sun
Dance was not fully "native," as my internal web of meaning

pretty much bars any form of belief in one system or another.

133

I was there to study - eventually myself. I doubt that any
one else in the Arbor thought to themselves, "hey, I’m having
a numinous experience in terms of the teachings I received in
the lodge as well as other systems of meanings and values
internalized over the past two years of study and fieldwork!"
I did.deeply feel my vision, however, and for the split second
before my self-analysis kicked in, I was probably like
everyone else to a degree, I was Sun Dancer in the grip of
spiritual ecstacy. I bring that out of the Dance and I think
that it is something new. I would not ask anyone else
involved in the Dance to analyze their own spirituality for me
in the way I have, nor would I feel comfortable doing it for
them. These things are Wakan, and I respect that.
Anthropology ruined a perfectly good ritual for me, although,
I was there for anthropology not myself. I climb mountains
for me.

This Sun Dance was not purely traditional, if there is
such a thing, especially because of the influence of the
personal beliefs of so many non-Natives. But the ritual
process was perhaps one of the most true to tradition in
decades. In this way, despite the All Nations aspects, I was
able to see, and be a part of, something very ancient. I left
the Sun Dance with an enormous amount of data relating to the
experience of the Sun Dancer during the ritual, at least as
far as ritual and symbolic action are concerned. The

traditional nature of the Dance allows for this to be extrapo-

134
lated into history to shed at least a little light on
ethnographic accounts short on affect and sense of
spirituality.

I think that Charles’s understanding of the Sun Dance,
and my own are probably very close. His is the Lakota
perspective of belief, and mine is the anthropological
perspective of objectification. He knew that to understand
what the Sun Dance was about I had to do it. For someone
wanting to perform anthropology from the practice approach,
this was a logical extension of anthropological position. I
could not, of course, learn what anyone else was experiencing
in whole but I did learn a great deal about the power of the
numinous and the human body to create belief. Not just the
leap of faith belief of philosophy but a belief that wells up
from the heart and soul to flood the human with a total
sensation of understanding and faith. ZMy Sun.Dance allowed.me
to bring life to a theory. I know a lot more about Sun Dance
than if I had sat, detached and aloof, in the Arbor just
taking notes. Ritual is not just a spectacle for observers,
it is an experience for participants. Charles said, "you’ve
got to give it up, boy." I did. I gave up thinking I knew
more about ritual than the man who was charged by the
ancestors to keep it alive. I surrendered myself and
significant aspects of my research to the people who really
know about the Sun Dance. I let them teach me what I should

know. It worked. I had to pray and to suffer for this

135
thesis. Prayers do not come true without effort. Observing
by Dancing made me realize the full extent of what is
happening in this ritual. I have tried to give some of that
to the reader in support of theory and in the sense of the

ceremony.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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