Thesis on "Shaman as a Spiritual Specialist in Indigenous Cultures"

Quoted Instructions for "Shaman as a Spiritual Specialist in Indigenous Cultures" Assignment:

Start out with an overview of the belief of the Indigenous culture that everything is alive and everything is *****. Spirituality guides all actions. Talk briefly about the circle of right relationships (circle of existence. Talk about living in harmony with Earth. The Earth is viewed as sacred, evertything has a soul, human and inanimate. The goal is to live in harmony with Earth and ***** to created equilibrium or balance.

Go into the role of the Shaman as a mediary between the souls and peoples. Be as specific as possible. How one became or was choosen to be a Shaman. detailing the rituals, including drumming, trance, Altered state of consciuosness, entering the Upper World and the Lower world during the ceremony. Thanks,

I have attached a sample "super Paper from my professor. Not on my subject of course.

Indigenous way of Life through Spirituality and Respect

I will take you into the world of Indigenous people and their religious outlook. I am going to look at traditions, rituals, and some mystics.

Right now, I am going to discuss the Sun Dance according to the Lakota [from: Crawford, Susanne J: Native American Religious Traditions, pg19-25]. The Lakota build two ceremonial tipis, one for men, and the other for women. More specifically built for the dancers of the Sun Dance, for them to sleep in to prepare them for their work the next day. The floors of the tipis are covered with *****. The Sun Dance is an annual event, it takes place midsummer. This is apparently when the community gets together for the familiar bond they each share; also, extended families come to support the dancers and the sacrifices they are making in the annual Sun Dance [19]. For many tribes of Plains Indians whose bison-hunting culture flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sun Dance was the major communal religious ceremony. The rite celebrates renewal, the spiritual rebirth of participants and their relatives as well as the regeneration of the living Earth with all its components. The ritual involves sacrifice and supplication to insure harmony between all living beings, and continues to be practiced by many contemporary Native Americans including the Lakota, in which I will discuss in detail how their Sun Dance is specifically done.

According to the text each gender has their own role, a woman elder points you to the direction of the cooking arbor, another woman inside of the cooking arbor, a man will be chopping firewood, hauling water and doing as you are instructed. Men are the ones who direct the Sun Dance itself, it is the women who direct the social aspects of the gathering as a whole, and the young men obediently do as the elder women direct. Then after the cooking arbor is taken care of you join the Sun Dance arbor, a circular shade located in front of the ceremonial tipis, before they are set in place the posts are blessed and prayed over, and sweetgrass is burned to purify and bless the space. They open the arbor towards the east. The opposite side is only open to and reserved for the wakan (holy) people, those participating in the dance, spiritual leaders and elders, the dancers, their advisors and teachers, the young virginal women who have cut the sacred pole, the mothers waiting to have their young infants' ears pierced. The other sides of the arbor are for observers not those wakan, who will offer their support for the dancers and others spiritual leaders [page 20].

Obviously there is much more planning in the Sun Dance for example they have also chosen four young men to get the sacred cottonwood tree. The tree later will be treated like an honored enemy. I find that very interesting and noble of the Lakota people. They will speak to this tree, they will pray to it and sing to this tree, it is treated with the utmost respect. They will also give a prayerful apology to the birds that lived on the branches. Then they choose four virginal women to each strike the tree in the four directions before others cut the tree down. When the tree falls the men present must catch it for the tree cannot hit the ground, they then carry the tree to the arena and several songs are sang to honor the tree. They use the sacred pipe smoke and prayers in the four directions. When the tree arrives at the arena a buffalo skull is placed at the base of the tree. They hang effigies of a man and a male buffalo are hung to symbolize fertility and success in hunting and warfare. Streamers of cotton cloth meant as offerings hang from the branches, along with tobacco ties. The colors of the tobacco ties and cotton cloth are symbolic the white means honoring the North; the yellow means honoring the east; the red means honoring the south; the black means honoring the west; green means honoring the earth and the blue means honoring the sky [21].

On the day of the ceremony you wake before the sun has risen, the Lakota people will prepare for the sacred Sun Dance. Dancers will fast from food and water the other participants will do the same. They will paint their bodies will red, the color of sacred, powerful things.

Once the sun rises the dancers enter the arena, they dance around the central pole, every movement a concentrated prayer. The rising sun heats up the arena, the dancers eyes are fixated on the pole, meditating on his dream. The dancer wears a long red skirt and his chest bare; four eagle plumes are in his hair and a wreath of ***** around his head and a medicine bundle around his neck. These dances continue throughout the day as the dancers get into there holy (wakan) state. The ceremonial leader, a wise elder who has himself been a participate of the Sun Dance will kneel next to the male dancer. He will get his skin pierced with skewers made of eagle claws and tied leather thongs hanging from the sacred tree. Toward the end of the day, the male dancer dances around the tree, leaning back so that the skewers pull at the muscles in his chest. He will use the eagle bone whistle. He emits a high-pitched call. Men dance in a central circle around the sacred tree. While women make a bigger circle and dance, some of the women have feathers attached to their hair and others offer a flesh offering. The flesh offerings from the women are small circles of skin that are cut from their arms and legs; they are placed in a prayer bundle that is then hung from the central tree. Each one of the participates level of sacrifice is different, it depends on their pledge they took the year before and the guidance they received from their advisor. Nevertheless, as you can imagine in the midsummer heat dancing under the sun all day is not a small task or for that matter a small sacrifice. I know that I could not have the will power to sacrifice my muscles and joints that pain of dancing all day. That in itself is a form of strong prayer or meditation/trance.

The ceremony is still incomplete; the mothers will the young infants still have to have their ears pierced. The mothers will bring their children to center arena and lay them on a bed of *****, the ceremonial leader will then pierce each Childs ear, and at that point, the child becomes Lakota. Often the child will then receive a new name. The piercing of ears symbolize that the child will follow the Lakota way of life as well as honor the Lakota rituals and traditions [24].

My focus or point of the Sun Dance for each may be different but mostly on the same path. Some will do it to fulfill a dream, a vision, or a heartfelt desire to ease suffering of his people and to ease the suffering of the earth. They will also pray to ease the suffering of those friends or family members in prison, suffering from grief, alcoholism, illness or even old age and that they may live through another winter.

This ceremony is not only important just to the Lakota tribe but many others which may include: The Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes. Their rituals varied from tribe to tribe.

I have learned that in most indigenous cultures there is always a power within the dead. According to Lehmann, Myers, and Moro in Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion [pg301], they point out that there is a variation among cultures in the degree of interaction between the living and the dead. The intensity and concern they may have for the deceased is high. Eskimos for instance are never free of anxieties about ghosts, whereas ghosts do not bother the Pueblo Indians. The Plains Indians of North America has constructed elaborate ghost beliefs. Now the Siriono of South America, although they believe in ghosts, paid little attention to them.

Dream catchers, we all know what they are, but do we know what they are used for? According to Crystalinks.com, there is a traditional belief that a dream catcher filters a person's dreams, letting through only the good ones. There are related legends.

The dream catcher, in Native American culture, is a handmade object based on a hoop (traditionally of willow), incorporating a loose net, and decorated with items unique to the particular dream catcher.

The Dream catcher allegedly helps us remember our dreams. It is regarded by some as a serious tool that is much more than a decorative ornament. The opening in the center determines the volume that you are asking to receive and parallels the changes that will occur in your life.

In the Ojibway tribe, night visions, or dreams, were so important that children were not given a name until after a person designated as the "namer" of that child had a dream as to what he/she should be called. The namer might give give the child a charm woven to look like a spider's web in order to protect the baby's dreams. Native Americans believed in the legend of Spider Woman, she who sits at the great galactic center. She is the female force of all creation that joins all nations, all tribes, all galactic families, and all realities together, in her web.

Within the life of Native Americans, tradition is also important as the body of acquired and revealed knowledge. Tradition and spiritual belief were bound in a web of understanding the natural world and how to survive in it. Certain traditions are longstanding. Native Americans sacred beliefs and practices remain virtually unchanged. [Beck, Walters, and Francisco 1996,4]

Respect is also important to Indian Spiritual traditions, they are important for individual visions, the traditions, the cosmos and its powers and laws. In Native American sacred ways they limit the amount of explaining a person can do. In this way, they can guide a person's behavior toward the world of natural laws. Many of the Native American sacred teaching will show you that if people try to explain everything (as we do in western concept) they will bring disaster upon themselves.

A Native American theology may be impossible to express. Often the essence of the sacred is expressed as incapable of being expressed or described. That is an appropriate attitude for the mystical understanding. Unexplainable or inexpressible is at the core of Native American religious ethos (the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people). The Natives have that religious ethos accompanied by power and mystery. The attitudes of respect exist in regards to the sacred and for all life within a relationship. [Fauteck, Luan 2007. Native North American religions and Participatory Visions].

I have conferred on one spiritual ritual that is profound to the Lakota people and many other tribes within the Plains Indians, the Sun Dance. I have also discussed the mystical power of the dream catcher and the simplicity of respect among the Native peoples. I also briefly conferred on the religious and spiritual view of the dead among some Natives. I have learned that in writing and researching this paper, we should probably incorporate some of the Native American beliefs into mostly all other forms of religion. I am sure that in some point in time, their traditions or viewpoints were incorporated into the Christian religion. I am not sure of what but it seems to me that respect plays a huge role in most native American tribes, they respect the sun, the sky and the earth, they respect there friends and families and even their enemies. Alone respecting your enemies is powerful in the sense of using will power not to hate. The Bible teaches people to love one another, but mostly when Christians are at war with someone different from them, they are not "loving" that person. In Native religious views they will actually pray and respect their enemy. So based on what I did not know I learned to like it and briefly understand some concepts of the Native American thinking.

Arthur C Lehmann, James E Myers and Pamela A Moro.

2005, 2001, 1997, 1993, 1989, 1985. Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. New York, NY: McGraw-HIll

Beck,P.V.A.L Walters, and N. Francisco.

1996. The sacred: Ways of Knowledge, sources of life. Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College Press.

Crawford, Suzanne J

2007. Religions of the World Native American Religious Traditions

Laurence King Publishing Ltd, pages

Crystal, Ellie

1995-2008. Dreamcatcher. http://www.crystalinks.com/dreamcatcher.html

updated 4/23/2008, viewed on 4/23/08, Crystalinks is created and designed by Ellie Crystal.

Fauteck, Luan

2007. Luan Fauteck Makes Marks: Native North American Religions and Participatory Visions.

Heldref Publications