Week 5
Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman
Biographical, Historical, and Pre-historic Context
Figures in Lakota Woman
Major rituals/ceremonies:
Peyote Meeting, Ghost Dance, Yuwipi, Sweat Lodge, Sun Dance
Turning points in Narratives of Religion, Love, and Death
Intersections of the horizontal and vertical (depth) dimensions
Nature, Society, Tribes, Nations
Suffering, Embodiment, and Compassion
Biographical, Historical, and Pre-historic Context
Mary Crow Dog (neé Mary Brave Bird 1954-2013)
Lakota Sioux: Fully initiated through various rituals including the Sun Dance; Founding member of AIM: American Indian Movement; Married Leonard Crow Dog, Medicine Man, leader of his tribe as well as AIM
Background of Lakota Sioux
Hybrid hunter-gatherer/farming culture
Interface w/wild nature, settled agricultural life, and modern urban Western society
Oral traditions, ritual traditions, rural tribal life
Homo Sapiens (China at Zhuangzi: 15 million people; China today: 1.5 billion people)
Smartphones: 2007; Laptops: 1990s; Personal Computers: 1980s
Information Age: Late 20th Century; Industrial Revolution: 19th Century; Writing: 7000 yrs
Agriculture: 11,500 yrs ago; Clothing: 40,000 – 170,000 yrs; Cooking: 1.8 – 2.3 million yrs
Emergence out of Africa: Homo Sapiens 200,000 yrs ago; Hominims 2 million yrs ago
Major rituals and ceremonies
Peyote Meeting of the Native American Church
Officially recognized by the government of the United States, incorporates Christianity
Adapted and evolved by the Lakota Sioux and many other tribes
The Peyote paste itself is regarded as the Peyote spirit and is highly respected and integrated into a rigorous ritual process overseen by a medicine man
Ghost Dance
From 1889, created to bring tribes together in unity, unite living with spirits of the dead, advance healthy communal living, millenarist view advocated at Wounded Knee 1890. Circle dance is key element.
Yuwipi -
Ritual led by medicine man using prayer, drums, and song to summon the spirits for physical and spiritual heaing.
Sweat Lodge
Prayer and healing in the body-heart-mind-spirit purification through intense heat exposure
Sun Dance
Physical and spiritual test and sacrifice for one’s own people involving skin piercing
Turning Points - Examples
Leaving the Catholic Boarding School (39-41)
Fight with priest/teacher: “That was my last day in school” (40-41).
First Peyote Meeting (92-101)
“I saw a lot of good things, and suddenly I understood. I understood the reality contained in this medicine, understood that this herb was our heritage . . . I became part of the earth because peyote comes from the earth, even tastes like the earth sometimes. And so the earth was in me and I in it, Indian earth making me more Indian. And to me Peyote was people, was alive, was a remembrance of things long forgotten” (95-96).
Wounded Knee I: 1890, II: 1973 (125-168)
Mary Crow Dog stays with all of the AIM fighters and bears her child Pedro (160-167)
Marriage to Leonard Crow Dog (170-176, 183-185)
Sun Dance (257-260)
“I did not feel any pain because I was in the power. . . . It was at that moment that I, a white-educated half blood, became wholly Indian. I experienced a great rush of happiness” (260)
Suffering, Embodiment, and
Compassion
Cheryl Strayed, Wild -- Hartford Courant
“Just about all our physical adventures end up being spiritual and in some ways changing us.”
“Having to think about your feet hurting and keep going ended up being a great way to heal psychic wounds as well.”
“I was basically physically enacting what I needed to do emotionally. I had to accept my suffering and keep going.”
Ram Dass & Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaji)
“I was stroked” by the Divine -- Fierce Grace – highlights at 3:40, 19:50, 1:30:00
Maharaji “was always ready and alert to mitigate the sufferings of the helpless by taking their pains upon himself. His body became a honeycomb of diseases. This was the price he had to pay for his compassion and his readiness to help.” “Neem Karoli Baba Stories”
When Maharaji “was told by a grieving student that his life was filled with suffering, he smiled and said, “So is mine. But I don’t mind the suffering so much.”
Mary Crow Dog and Lakota Woman
Sweat Lodge: “If the heat is more than a person can stand, he or she can call out “Mitakuye oyasin!” – All my relations” “Great Spirit, we thank you for making us suffer so. We are suffering four our brothers in jail.” . . . I thought, “These people don’t sweat to purify themselves. They sweat to suffer” (205)
Sun Dance: “Leonard told me, ‘I’ll cut the skin from your arm. That’s a sacrifice. Your prayers go out to those suffering in jail, for friends who are sick.’ I made my flesh offering thinking of all the brothers and sisters who had died, who, I felt, had somehow died for me” (258)