I wonder why I was asked to talk about "modern Lakota religion" at this gathering. What can I talk about?

1. The meaning of ritual and symbols? Only someone who has been trained in the ritual and language of this practice is able to speak to this topic. I have no competence there.

2. The ideological and practical response of Lakota religion to Christianity? To do this requires competence in both systems, and here I'm doubly incompetent, being trained in neither. Besides, I don't think that an argument over Christian influences in Lakota "religion" is relevant to the lives of Lakotas. My bias, and the reasons for it, will come out as I talk.

3. Recent history of the renaissance of Lakota religion? We're getting closer. At least an anthropologist who is an outsider could be expected to be competent here. I don't think any outsider should be expected to be competent in the first two topics. However, as interesting as this topic may be, my concerns have been such that I don't think I'm competent enough here to be interesting to you.

4. One place where anthropologists are competent, though, is in putting any topic of conversation into a context -- in this sense, anthropology is always about something else. So given my assigned topic of "modern Lakota religion" I'm going to talk about something else -- I'm going to talk about aspects of the historical, social and cultural context in which what we call "modern Lakota religion" is happening, at least those aspects that interest me and that I hope will give you something to think about, even if you think I'm wrong.

The first point of argument is based on what a yuwipi man told me in January of 1967. He said, "Some people say this is religious. It's not. The Catholics are religious and I go to church every Christmas. [he didn't go that Christmas.] This isn't religious. I'm working with the spirits." As a young apprentice I didn't think I had the right to ask for amplification, and he didn't offer any. Around that same month, another spiritual practitioner told me that there isn't any word for what Lakotas do, like Christians or Catholics or Episcopalians or the like. All you can say is ikte wicasa tawocekiye -- ordinary man's way of praying.

Now when these spiritual people say that what they are doing isn't "religion" they probably don't mean the same thing as what I mean when I say that, and here is where I know you're going to be shocked, but please bear with me and float through the words. I'm not attached to the words, but I am attached to the distinction of concepts. I know that we can agree at least partially on the concepts, and maybe you can help me find suitable labels for them.

What I'm putting into a basket that's not labeled religion are, first, the direct, personal, irrefutable, immediate, total apprehension of...what? God? The Cosmos? The Tao? The Light? That cannot be communicated in any symbol system, whether language, music, myth, and so forth, although people have been trying to do so as long as they have been humans; second, the dim minor twitches and hints of experiences that are variously called altered states of consciousness, out-of-body experiences, contacts with spirits, TM, and other more culturally expressed personal experiences; and third the experiences that give meaning and serenity to the way of life and death and transfiguration in relation to the cosmic organization revealed in the first kind of experiences and alluded to in the second. For want of a better word I'm labeling this basket "spirituality".

There is a Zen aphorism, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon." What I have labeled "spirituality" is the moon. What I call "religion" is the finger. What I call "religion" is the body of symbols that people use to talk about their experiences and concerns that I have labeled "spirituality". Obviously we're talking about the cultural heritage that provides people with the language to talk about their experiences, and the framework to organize them and to relate them to the rest of their lives. This includes myths, plots of myths, characters in myths, colors, designs, music, and so on. This also includes the use of these symbols to control people and to deny the reality of their "spiritual" experiences also. Discussions of theology and ethics also belong here, as being derived from the symbols rather than the experiences. As one spiritual practitioner told me, "Spirituality don't make you good, it just makes you good at what you're doing."

All this is a long way around to say what you already know, but what Christians didn't know in the past: Lakota "religion", that is, Lakota spiritual practice, is not competitive with Christianity. On the one hand, some people will say that their vision quests, their participation in inipi and other ceremonies, their praying "Indian way" as they describe it, have made their Christianity more meaningful for them, have made them better Christians. There are also those people who don't feel a need for explicit Christian practice, and then there are those who don't feel a need for explicit Lakota practice, and then there are all those others in between these three extremes. On the other hand, there are certain areas of life where Christianity as the official ideology of Euro-American industrial culture (note well that here I am making the distinction between ideology in the service of a particular cultural process and ideology as an organizing framework for spiritual experience) just doesn't do the job for some people.

I'm going to take up a few of these areas of life, and try to point to ways in which Lakotas I have known have tackled problems and concerns in these areas with the language and experience of Lakota religion. The discussion will be in generalities to protect confidentiality and to respect personal obligations.

These life areas are (1) healing; (2) identity; (3) community; and (4) purpose. I don't think I have to convince anybody that these life areas are intimately related, but obviously there are other equally important life areas -- I just happen to be more interested in these.

Before you say he's even more arrogant than he said he was, now he's claiming to talk about our internal psychology, let me put these questions aside for a while and ask some other questions that can be answered by trying to answer questions about spirituality and life areas. These are questions about historical process.

When I first visited Pine Ridge Reservation in 1962, the official anthropological, sociological, historical, political and religious line was that Lakota religion was dying, just like Lakota language and culture (but everybody called it Sioux, then). Check it out -- read Feraca (1963), Howard, McGregor (1946), Malan (1958), Federal policy statements. Lakota religion, language and culture, like other Indian cultures, were discussed in the past tense, more insulting, in the "ethnographic present" -- some mythical timeless "golden age" of purity with no reference to living people. In 1963, the only public Sun Dance on Pine ridge had to quit at noon for the official Tribal Pow Wow. The Federal relocation program had been going on for eight years, the specter of termination stalked the land, and the Korean War veterans were willy-nilly preparing their younger brothers and sisters for more military service in Viet Nam. Highway 18 had been completely blacktopped for less than ten years, but other black top stopped a half-mile north of Wounded Knee. The town parks in Rushville and Martin and Gordon had hand pumps, and outhouses graced the back yards of some of the houses in town.

In other words, the last 25 years has been a time of intense and intensifying culture change, not only on the rez, but in the US as a whole. By all the establishment rules of culture change, by all the "acculturation models" by which educators and public health agents and other missionaries support their policies, Indians should be part of mainstream America by now, their old superstitions replaced by science and Christianity, their customs serving the same functions as those of the Swedes and the Czechs -- an excuse to wear pretty and exotic clothes and make fun of the past to show how far we have progressed.

Now why is it that in spite of massive changes in the physical and social and cultural environment, in spite of increasing involvement in mainstream American life, Lakotas and other Indians are going through a renaissance in tradition, religion, and spirituality, and have intensified their uniqueness, their past, and their future? Part of this big question can be approached by looking at Lakota spirituality and religion in the context of the Lakota nation and people in history and in legal and social relations, in the context of Lakotas and other Indians, and in the context of Lakotas and non-Indians, but I want to do this in relation to the four aspects of Lakota religion that I referred to, namely healing, identity, community and purpose.

HEALING: To make well, to make whole again. We can't restrict healing to physical conditions that Euro-American medicine insists on. The Euro-American invasion brought not only smallpox and the like, but also alcohol, what has been called hedonistic individualism, attacks on the extended family, disruption of the relationship between humans and their environment, and other pathogens. The result was not only epidemics of smallpox and tuberculosis, but also spiritual diseases that European medicine not only didn't/doesn't recognize, but couldn't cure anyway. It has taken Indian science/religion/spirituality a long time to recognize this explicitly (see Jilek (1982) for a Northwest Coast version of this recognition), and not all practitioners are consciously putting their theories together in this way, but we see the way spiritual practitioners -- wicasa wakan, wap'iye, however they may be called -- approach problems of substance abuse, and the way some drug counselors go up on the hill as a way of making their practice better, as indications that they know one way or another that in a way drug abuse is a symptom of an illness associated with a loss of spiritual connectedness. For some Lakotas, spiritual experience in a Lakota framework and expressed in Lakota symbolic vocabulary seems to work. We could talk about claims of healing Euro-American disease categories, and the necessity of right living for health, but I just want to offer this one example because it helps build a larger argument. And it is a good example of the way in which spiritual, social, mental and physical health are so intimately related. Take note of outsiders, other tribes and non-Indians, but we'll take note of them later.

IDENTITY: College psychologists will tell you that what they call a strong identity depends on independence from the group, and are surprised to find people who know who they are and are comfortable with it, who are self-motivated and autonomous, and who are firmly embedded in an extended family that is their first orientation. A very important and highly successful part of Euro-American industrial culture is the pressure to destroy these communal ties and to force people to rely only on themselves for physical and emotional survival. A Lakota has to learn to act according to one set of rules in that situation, another set of rules in another situation. In other words, the person has to learn a number of different and sometimes conflicting sets of rules, plus rules for deciding what sets of rules to use when. When we learn this in anthropology school, we get a Ph.D. When Indians learn this specialists call them fragmented personalities.

The most obvious way that Lakota religion supports a strong identity is by offering a collection of symbols, of badges, to remind one of his/her history, location in space/time and so on, or handles to grab hold of in distress. On a deeper level, the knowledge of membership in a community and the spiritual meaning of this membership provides a base and a continuity that helps one to cope with the many sets of rules and to put them in a perspective. In this kind of identity, the physical and visible badges are expressions of identity, not crutches, and the functioning symbols are internal. In a large sense, healing consists of strengthening one's identity, as a Lakota, as a member of a community, as a functioning and responsible member of a community.

COMMUNITY: The other day, at a gathering of about thirty people to celebrate the first birthday of a member of their family, an elder who is a minister said, '"We're all related, whether we like it or not." People have told me over and over again that the modern formulaic prayer, mitakuye oyasin, refers to the fact that all life is related, and that the rocks, the rivers, the winds, the sun and moon, all these that Euro-American science defines as not living, are part of this living family. Recognition of the benefits and responsibilities that come from membership in this family is a large part of the spiritual connectedness that I'm talking about. Building these spiritual connections is part of the job of growing up, maturing. Rebuilding these connections is part of healing.

PURPOSE: I do this so that my people may live. I want to help my people. This is another prayer we hear a lot. This is one of the things I mean by "purpose". Another thing is the age-old problem that hits all of us at one point or another in our lives -- "What am I here for?" "What am I to do with my life and how am I going to do it?" That's what hanbleceye was supposed to be for, and most cultures that are in touch with their spirituality provide some kind of institution like that for their young people to find their way and to support them in their search. Ideally, this involves some form of direct experience, either the total and immediate apprehension, or a less overwhelming contact, that I referred to earlier. Wise men and women interpret these experiences, and help the seekers put their experiences and lives together to find a way of life that contributes in some way or another to the community -- tiyospaye, bioregion, whatever � of which they are a part. For people who have lost their way, or who have never had the opportunity to find it, healing and purpose are part of the same process.

Now so far I've just been telling you some things that I've chosen from what different Lakota have told me, not always in their words, but the way I understand them. This would be enough if Lakotas were surviving by themselves. But that's not the case. I've talked about the distorting influences of Euro-American military and industrial activity, disease, and ideology, and pointed to some ways in which Lakota religion has adapted to this and helps Lakota people to survive. We also have to recognize that like it or not, Lakota religion -- the symbol system of Lakota spirituality -- has become a major influence in the spiritual renaissance of Indians of other nations, and non-Indians as well. I want to talk a little about what I see as some implications of this, for Lakotas and for others.

Now you all know about the Comanches and Cherokees and so on who come out here to sweat and to participate in Sun Dance, who are trying to heal themselves by experiencing a spiritual expression of community, purpose and identity. For some of these people, raised apart from their own communities, or estranged from them, this is the only Indian spirituality they know; for some it's a step to rediscovering their own heritage. But the influence of Lakota religion goes beyond Lakota territory. A little while ago I was in a sweat with some California Indians in the Sierra Nevada. Now according to the books and the older people, these people used to use a dry sweat -- a direct fire in the lodge -- and no water. Here we had a little Plains-type lodge, rocks heated in a fire outside and water poured on the hot rocks inside, four openings, and we said all my relations. All the time the leader of the sweat was talking about California Indian religion as the original and more powerful religion. In California, suits to allow Indian religious services in prisons include sweats, pipe ceremony, tobacco ties, sage, sweetgrass, cedar and headbands in their lists of requirements. Not all Indian prisoners in California are Lakota, and not all Indian religious traditions include all these practices. So the legal system has to understand that the living religious traditions change and are influenced by other living traditions; and also the legal system has to understand that people who have been deprived of their heritage turn to the most accessible spiritual path they can find. Because of their hospitality and generosity, and because of the popular exposure of some of their spiritual practitioners, and because of their travels, Lakotas have been pushed into the role of missionaries in some ways. They may not go out in the world to seek converts, but others seek them out.

This is really poignant when we look at the crowds of non-Indians, the grandchildren of the conquerors, who are turning to Indians in general and Lakota in particular, in search of something their culture doesn't give them. I'll take note of those who are looking for the exotic, who are following fads or riding hobbies, but I'm not counting them. People who I am counting are those who seek spiritual healing in the same way that Indians do, maybe not at first, but who come to realize the consequences of their actions; those who take the idea of community of life seriously, and can't find an acceptable way of expressing it in Euro-American tradition; those who find no solace in the institutions and way of life of what they see as a materialistic, atomistic, destructive society. To some, the ideal aspects of Lakota religion is an escape. To some, Lakota spiritual power is another resource to be exploited. Some may recognize the responsibility that comes with the participation and the experience. (A parallel might be drawn with the visit of representatives of the Lakota Nation to Washington about a hundred years ago. At a banquet in their honor one of the old men was having a fine time eating the meat and potatoes, one steak after another, rubbing the grease in his braids, when a dyspeptic old senator leaned over to him and said, "I sure wish I had your appetite!" The old man stopped eating, looked at him and said, "You took our land, took our animals, took our water, took our relatives, took our children, and now want my appetite!")

The experience of the Jews in Germany and the Indians of Guatemala remind us that any people who don't control the violent arm of the state only survive at the sufferance (whim?) of those who do control it. It was the US Supreme Court, not a Lakota Supreme Court, that made the Black Hills Decision. It was a US Congress, not a Lakota Congress, that passed the Indian Freedom of Religion Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act. It's a hard fact to face, that one's survival depends on alliances and convincing other people of the desirability of one's existence. But it's heartening to see, slowly and fitfully, but definitely, the growth of natural alliances based on common cause and needs. With increasing recognition of industry's potential to destroy our habitat � see Time and Newsweek for July about ocean pollution for example � we see that Euro-American culture needs a spiritual approach that makes explicit the place and responsibility of humans in the earth organism. The religions of indigenous people do just that, and in North America Lakotas have been the most generally articulate.

More and more, non-Indians interested in protecting their environment have turned to prior Indian claims to traditional religious use to support their goals. The most dramatic recent victory in this sense was the alliance of non-Indian residents and Lakotas to protect Hell Canyon in the Black Hills. Without Lakota participation, the non-Indians would have been helpless. (Not all attempts are successful or dramatic -- environmentalists and Indians lost, at least temporarily, in Northern California.)

You could say that Lakotas have done their part. They have provided a coherent and accessible body of thought that helps to put individual people in their place in the world and to heal their relationships to themselves and their community, and they continue to provide people and situations to help individuals in their search for meaning in their lives. In addition, their spiritual and legal relationship to the land provides the basis for a cooperative stewardship, and the traditional social structure provides a model for alliances -- Lakota, a confederacy, respecting the autonomy and responsibility of individuals and tiyospaye who make up the confederacy.

Now we can see how the others play their part. The non-Indians who come to spiritual practitioners for healing of troubled minds and bodies and souls, or who come to learn about Lakota religion, what are they going to do when they go home? The non-Indians who come to ask Indians for help in protecting this wilderness area, that aquifer, on short-term projects, what are they going to do in the long run? I like to think that after all these years of depredation, that Lakota spirituality and religion is one of the ways in which the original people's individual autonomy in community orientation, spiritual values over material values, respect for human's responsibility in the living earth, and appreciation of Beauty is transmitted to those who came later, in time to save us all. I hope it's not too late.

Feraca, Stephen
1963 Wakinyan: Contemporary Teton Dakota religion. Browning: Museum of the Plains Indian,
Studies in Plains Anthropology and History, 2.

Jilek, W.G.
1982 Indian Healing: Shamanic ceremonialism in the Pacific Northwest today. Surrey, B.C.:
Hancock House.

Macgregor, Gordon
1946 Warriors without weapons. A study of the society and personality development of the Pine
Ridge Sioux. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Malan, V.D.
1958 The Dakota Indian family. Brookings, S.D.: South Dakota State College Agricultural
Experiment Station, Bulletin 470.