Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Note from ILAT listserv manager: this news item was sent in error, my
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manage.

Phil Cash Cash
UofA, ILAT listserv manager


Quoting phil cash cash <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>:

> 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