There are seven sacred rituals in Lakota culture, which are given to us by White Buffalo Calf Woman.
Each is for our health as individuals and as a community.
THE SEVEN SACRED RITUALS
- The smoking of the pipe
The pipe is a relative. When you smoke the pipe, you are joining with all your relations.
- The sweat lodge or iniyipi, rite of purification
The sweat lodge is a sacred space in which hopes, concerns and prayers can be raised up to the spirits and each other. Along with pipe, it is a ritual we often practice that builds community and fosters health.
- The vision quest or hanblecheyapi
The vision quest is a way in which a person goes out in isolation to seek a sign, vision or dream of their unique calling or sense of purpose. An elder may help them interpret the meaning of their vision or dream.
- The sun dance or wiwanyag wachipi
Held only once a year, the sun dance is an eight day ceremony. The first four days are for purification, for example fasting for a day and participating in sweats. In the following four days, veterans are honored, mourning ceremonies are held, and sacred names are given. Dancers offer up their prayers for the people, not themselves.
Two-spirits, or winkte in the Lakota language, have an important role in the sun dance and naming ceremonies.
- The making of relatives or hunkapi
This is a ceremony originally created to make family of enemy tribes. It is a ceremony in which a person not related by blood can become fully a member of your family with all the support and responsibilities that go along with that. It reduces the chance that anyone is excluded.
Relatedly, we can fully accept a person into our community with the gift of a blanket, which we wrap around the new person in welcome.
- The preparing of a girl for womanhood or ishna ta awi cha lowan
This ceremony helps girls transition into womanhood. It emphasizes the value our traditional culture places on women. It was White Buffalo Calf woman, after all, who gave us these rituals.
- The throwing of the ball or tapa wanka yap
A ball made of buffalo hair was wrapped with buffalo hide. A little girl throws the ball in four directions and those gathered try to catch it. Catching the ball suggests you have a particular gift or you will receive wisdom. Gifts come to those who make an effort to catch them. If you never try you may not ever get them.
THE SWEAT LODGE
The sweat lodge is the most common ritual of the Lakota people and is for the offering up of prayers and concerns of the people,
There are many important elements to the sweat lodge that give it meaning.
Tying a prayer tie before the sweat lodge
You take a pinch of tobacco as offered by the sweat lodge leader and wrap it in a small square of cloth. These are often red in color. But the cloths could also be the four sacred colors, red, black, yellow and white, each one representing a different direction and each with its own meaning. You tie up the tobacco in the piece of cloth with a long piece of thread—long enough to be tied to other prayer ties.
Meaning: Tobacco is the sacred substance of prayer, just as sage is the sacred substance of purification and sweet grass is the sacred substance of blessing. When the prayer ties are ultimately burned, the smoke is the physical sign of your prayer going upwards to heaven.
The setting
The rocks or toka (representing the earth) are heated up by fire. Once hot, water is poured over them, creating the ni or breath of life. As such, the sweat lodge unites the four elements: earth, fire, water and air. It is one of the most precious of the gifts given to us by the White Buffalo Calf Woman.
Closing your eyes during the song about to be sung
Meaning for our health: When you only hear a prayer, you no longer see differences in age, sex, body or skin color. All are equal in offering up their prayers.
Opening song (inviting the spirits)
Meaning: Readying yourself for something wakan or holy, opening yourself to change.
Offering up your prayer (one by one)
Meaning: In the presence of the spirits and all four elements and our community, we can be honest and genuine in offering up our hopes and prayers for ourselves and others.
Each person closing their prayer with the words mitakuyasin, mee-tah-koo-yah-sen, or “all my relations.”
Meaning: None of us are alone in this world. We are related not just to our blood family but our wider community and also all the four-leggeds, the elements, and all of creation. This is both reassuring and humbling.
Tying all of the prayer ties together
Meaning: None of our needs or dilemmas are in isolation. All of the solutions to our dilemmas reside in the spirits around us and with each other. We rise or fall together.
Smoking the pipe
Each person smokes the pipe in turn within the sweat lodge. If a person opts not to smoke the pipe, he or she can tap the pipe once on each shoulder to still honor it.
Meaning: By smoking the pipe—which is a relative—with all those gathered in the sweat lodge—who are your community, you tap into the healing power of all your relations.
Keeping of the prayer ties to burn at the first new moon
Meaning: Waiting helps you practice patience, and the practice of your prayer during this time of waiting. It recognizes that the answers to our dilemmas will not be immediate, that solutions will take time and occur, as in everything else, in community.
Turning in a circle as you exit the sweat lodge
Meaning: The circle represents the connectedness of all things. By slowly turning in a circle you honor everything around you. The rocks and trees and animals are all your relations. By doing so with respect, you show your humility in the midst of them.
If you decide to use Lakota spiritual rituals for your own purposes, seek consultation with a Lakota elder so you don’t misuse the elements or show disrespect to our traditions. Christians wouldn’t want to see someone decide to have the 7 ½ commandments or have communion, only with cheese and crackers. Elements to our rituals which may seem unimportant to a non-native speaker have meanings. Spiritual practices gain their power from their faithful repetition and honoring of tradition.
For example, the sweat lodge, in Lakota tradition, is not a macho exercise to see who can stand the hottest temperature without fainting. It should be an environment that every person can feel able to participate. It is time of prayer and purification and ridding oneself of toxins and toxic attitudes.
Remember, whatever your ethnicity, mitakuyasin, we all have relations with each other by just participating and respectfully learning about each other’s cultures. How might the world be different if we treated everyone and everything around us as our relation?
Jason Ghost
Wicahpi Ata Hin (Star Above Him)
