Tribal Responses to Colonial Subjugation:

Religious Salvation and Ideological Syncretism

The Indian Wars: Resistance was futile

The Reservation Period

Churches attacked both family structure and belief systems

Pre-contact belief systems

Animatism: belief in a supernatural power not part of supernatural beings

Animism: belief that natural objects are animated by spirits

the spirits are thought of as having identifiable personalities and other characteristics such as gender

Everything in nature has a unique spirit or all are animated by the same spirit or force

Both present in some societies

For Native Americans, animism dominates

We see some evidence in material remains, but most information comes from post-Contact ethnography

Variations

Ancestral spirits

After death, spirits retain an active interest and even membership in their family and society.  Like living people, they can have emotions, feelings, and appetites.  They must be treated well to assure their continued good will and help to the living.

Gods/goddessesPowerful supernatural beings with individual identities and recognizable attributes

Rare in Native America—Creator, Mother Earth, but these are often ill-defined

Hero/trickster figures

Beings with some supernatural abilities such as transformation—coyote, raven, spider are

examples

Time and Cosmology

The power of the circle

Cyclical nature of time

The sacred directions

Sacred colors

Medicine Wheels abound on the Plains

Quillwork medicine wheel

Ojibwe lodge

Pawnee lodge

Belief system change did occur

Beliefs form a stable core, but do adapt to natural and social environments

Example: Old vs new Lakota beliefs

Inyan Kara—rock makerWhite Buffalo Calf Woman and

the spread of the calumet (pipe)

Bison herd near Wind Cave, where Iktomi tricked the people into coming from the underground

Post-Contact ideology

Contact and syncretism

Nativistic movements

The Good Message of Handsome Lake

A syncretic combination of traditional Seneca and Quaker beliefs and practices

Purpose: to draw the Seneca back toward “the old ways” and to “protect” them from whites

Revitalization movements

The Ghost Dance (see Edison 1894 film)

Bole-maru, California Pawnee ghost dance drum

Wovoka with Plains delegation

The Christian struggle for control

Grant’s reservation policy and churches

Boarding schools and breakdown of families

Bans on many religious practices

Woodrow Crumbow--Sundance

The Native American Church

Peyote cactus

For a good history, see the Religious Movements page on NAC

Peyote song: Primeaux and Mike

American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978

Title 42 - The Public Health and Welfare    Chapter 21 - Civil Rights        SubChapter I - Generally

American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978

§ 1996. Protection and preservation of traditional religions of Native Americans On and after August 11, 1978, it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Pan-Indian Trends

Powwow

Eklutna (Alaska) Annual Powwow

Crow Fair, Montana

Gathering of Nations, Albuquerque