Tribal Responses to Colonial Subjugation: Religious Salvation and Ideological Syncretism

1. Tribal Responses to Colonial Subjugation: Religious Salvation and Ideological Syncretism

2. The Indian Wars: Resistance was futile

3. The Reservation Period

4. Churches attacked both family structure and belief systems

5. 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

6. Variations • Ancestral spirits • After death, spiritsretain 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/goddesses • Powerful 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

7. Time and Cosmology The power of the circle Cyclical nature of time The sacred directions Sacred colors Ojibwe lodge Medicine Wheels abound on the Plains Pawnee lodge Quillwork medicine wheel

8. Belief system change did occur • Beliefs form a stable core, but do adapt to natural and social environments • Example: Old vs new Lakota beliefs White Buffalo Calf Woman and the spread of the calumet (pipe) Inyan Kara—rock maker Bison herd near Wind Cave, where Iktomi tricked the people into coming from the underground

9. 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

10. Revitalization movements • The Ghost Dance (see Edison 1894 film) Wovoka with Plains delegation Pawnee ghost dance drum Bole-maru, California

11. 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

12. The Native American Church Peyote song: Primeaux and Mike Peyote cactus For a good history, see the Religious Movements page on NAC

13. 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.

14. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

15. Pan-Indian Trends Powwow Gathering of Nations, Albuquerque Eklutna (Alaska) Annual Powwow Crow Fair, Montana