Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain

For four days, 150 people gather near La Grande for a sun dance, a
sacred Native American ceremony

Sunday, July 31, 2005
RICHARD COCKLE
The Oregonian

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1122803785257970.xml&coll=7

LA GRANDE -- Bob Dirty Moccasins lay on his back in the hot sun as
another man pierced the skin of his chest with a knife. More than 20
bare-chested men in feathers and red skirts danced around him while
drums beat and everyone sang.

Two men inserted chokecherry sticks into the slits in his chest and tied
them off with red ribbons. With the help of other dancers, Dirty
Moccasins, 60, struggled weakly to his feet. A rope connected the
sticks to a cottonwood tree.

Bernie Cliff, one of the organizers, shouted: "Pray for your families!"
At his words, the singing crescendoed, dancers and onlookers cheered
and raised their arms.

The scene is the centerpiece of the fourth annual Blue Mountain Sun
Dance, a four-day Native American spiritual event that drew more than
150 people to a high, lonely forest canyon north of La Grande.

The sun dance blends deprivation, pain, drumming, prayer and dancing to
achieve help and enlightenment through physical sacrifice to the
creator. The loosely organized gathering here usually is private and
attracts little attention. Participants allowed a reporter to watch the
ceremony, but they didn't allow photographs or sketches to record the
dancing.

The federal government discouraged sun dances from 1888 until the
American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. About 300 of the
ceremonies are held in the United States each year, Bernard Red
Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance chief, told a Lincoln, Neb.,
newspaper in 2003.

Sun dances, a Great Plains tribal ceremony that has spread to other
regions, are controversial among Native Americans. Some tribal leaders
promote them as public events and allow nontribal participants, but
others say the sacred ceremonies should not even be viewed by
outsiders. They generally closely guard details to protect the
intensely personal nature of the rite and to head off misunderstandings
about the piercing.

Walla Walla Tribal Chief Bill Burke, 74, of the Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, said he's heard criticism that
sun dances aren't part of this region's religion. But he said he
supports the Blue Mountain gathering.

"I helped them out, as a matter of fact," he said. "I believe there has
to be some spiritual experience there."

Neither is he disturbed by the issue of non-native people taking part,
he said. "It is a religious practice, and who am I to say who should be
practicing it?" he said.

After a few moments recovering from the piercing, Dirty Moccasins backed
up to the cottonwood tree and began dancing slowly in place. He blew a
wooden whistle with a feather attached while four other men had their
chests pierced and were tied to the tree.

All would dance that way for at least an hour before freeing themselves
by jerking violently backward and ripping their flesh free of the
sticks and rope.

"If you are in prayer enough, you don't feel it," said dancer Tom Futter
of Olympia, a veteran of the practice who planned to undergo the painful
ritual today. "I feel the knife for only a half-second."

People at the gathering came from as far as Canada, Texas and Oklahoma.
It's a mix of Native Americans and people with connections to tribal
members. Bob Dirty Moccasins, for example, said his wife is Apache.

"There is blood that runs through my heart like a buffalo," he said.

This is Futter's eighth sun dance. His chest is scarred from piercings,
as are the chests of several other dancers.

"I do it for my family, mainly, for the people I have lost in the past
year," said Futter, whose ancestors include members of the Umatilla and
Cayuse tribes and French-Canadians.

This year's ceremony began Thursday morning in heat and dust with
rhythmic dancing, insistent drumming and singing. Participants consume
no food or water for four days, although they rest from time to time in
the shade of a circular lodgepole arbor covered by fir boughs.

Dancers aren't required to be pierced and tied to the tree, and it
wasn't clear how many would do so.

The sun dance includes a healing ceremony and ends with a feast of
native dishes, including elk and smoked salmon.

Some people take part in the dances as a way to sacrifice when a family
member or loved one is ill, said Bernie Cliff, who is Cayuse, Sioux and
Arapaho. For others, the sun dance is a declaration of independence.

"We've had our languages taken away and our religion," said Cliff, who
also lives in Benton City, Wash. "We've lost our land, our buffalo. The
last thing we have is this." The Cliff family organized the gathering
and has studied and taught the ceremony for years to keep it alive,
members said.

Women normally aren't pierced during sun dances because they suffer
during childbirth and don't need to suffer more, he said. But women
dancers tie eagle feathers to their arms as a symbol of their
solidarity. They also go without food or water for four days like the
men, he said.

When the dance is over, Cliff said, the participants are exhausted.

"Grumpy, too. And thirsty," he said. "They are going to want to go
home."

Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle at oregonwireless.net