Native American Women

1. Native American Women Native American Women

2. General Information • Cultural Diversity • Matrilineal Social Structures • Sacred Areas • Polytheism: Changing Woman, Dineh White Buffalo Woman, Lakotah White Painted Woman, Indeh

3. Dineh • The Navajo were given the name Ni’hookaa Diyan Diné by their creators. • It means "Holy Earth People" or "Lords of the Earth". • Navajos today simply call themselves "Diné", meaning "The People".

6. Changing Woman

7. Changing Woman grew up around northern New Mexico. • She married the Sun and bore two son, twins, and heroes to the Navajo people. • They were known as "Monster Slayer" and "Child-Born-of-Water". • The twins traveled to their father the Sun who gave them weapons of lighting bolts to fight the dreaded monsters. • Every place the Hero Twins killed a monster it turned to stone.

8. Changing Woman created humans by rubbing the skin from her breast, from her back, and from under both arms. • In this way, she created the first four clans; from her breast Kinyaa'aanii(Towering House Clan). • From her back, the Honaghaahnii (One-Walk-Around Clan10) • From her right arm, the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan) was created, • From her left arm, the Hashtl'ishnii (Mud Clan) was made.

9. Changing Woman then traveled to the Western Ocean to be with her husband, the Sun (Jóhónaa'éí). Many believe this is Hawaii • She is often called White Shell Woman • Her home was made of the four sacred stones: Abalone, White Shell, Turquoise, and Black Jet.

10. Changing Woman then traveled to the Western Ocean to be with her husband, the Sun (Jóhónaa'éí). Many believe this is Hawaii • She is often called White Shell Woman • Her home was made of the four sacred stones: Abalone, White Shell, Turquoise, and Black Jet.

11. White Shell Woman

12. Kinaalda • Ceremony to celebrate puberty for young women • Honors the perpetuation of Changing Woman; • Prayer, dressing, molding, corn grinding, running

14. THE BLESSINGWAY (Beautyway) CEREMONY • The story of the creation is recounted in a ceremony known as the Blessingway, which is the foundation of the Navajo way of life. • Blessingway focuses on the story of Changing Woman • The Blessingway recounts in detail the instructions Changing Woman gave to the Navajo people she created.

15. Blessingway • These teachings concern history and major religious practices, such as girl's puberty rite and the consecration of a family's hogan. • When performed in its entirety, the Blessingway is a two-day ceremony whose purpose is to obtain peace, harmony, protection, and to help realize the goal of a long happy life.

16. Lakotah Nation

17. The word Sioux was given to them by the French “Snake” • The name they gave themselves was Dakota meaning "friend" or "ally." • The original Seven Council Fires. The "Oceti-Sakowin" included the following: • 1. Mdewakantonwan, Spirit Lake People • 2. Wahpekute, Shooters among the Leaves • 3. Sisseton, People of the Fish Ground (Sisseton) • 4. Wahpetonwan, Dwellers among the Leaves (Wahpeton) • 5. Ihanktonwana, Little Dwellers of the End (Yanktonais) • 6. Ihanktonwan, Dwellers of the End (village)(Yankton) • 7. Tetonwan, Dwellers on the Plains (Teton)

18. White Buffalo Woman White Buffalo Woman

19. Early one morning the chief sent two of his young men to hunt for game. • They went on foot, because at that time the Sioux didn't yet have horses. • Seeing a high hill, they decided to climb it in order to look over the whole country. • Halfway up, they saw something coming toward them from far off, but the figure was floating instead of walking. From this they knew that the person was waken , holy.

20. it was a young woman with two round, red dots of face paint on her cheeks. She wore a wonderful white buckskin outfit, tanned until it shone a long way in the sun. • It was embroidered with sacred and marvelous designs of porcupine quill, in radiant colors no ordinary woman could have made. • This wakan stranger was Ptesan­Wi, White Buffalo Woman. • In her hands she carried a large bundle and a fan of sage leaves. She wore her blue­black hair loose except for a strand at the left side, which was tied up with buffalo fur. Her eyes shone dark and sparkling, with great power in them.

21. The two young men looked at her open­mouthed. • One was overawed, but the other desired her body and stretched his hand out to touch her. • This woman was lila waken, very sacred, and could not be treated with disrespect. • Lightning instantly struck the brash young man and burned him up, so that only a small heap of blackened bones was left.

22. To the other scout who had behaved rightly, the White Buffalo Woman said: "Good things I am bringing, something holy to your nation. A message I carry for your people from the buffalo nation. Go back to the camp and tell the people to prepare for my arrival. Tell your chief to put up a medicine lodge with twenty­four poles. Let it be made holy for my coming." • This young hunter returned to the camp. He told the chief, he told the people, what the sacred woman had commanded. • After four days they saw the White Buffalo Woman approaching, carrying her bundle before her.

23. She told him what she wanted done. • In the center of the tipi they were to put up an owanka wakan, a sacred altar, made of red earth, with a buffalo skull and a three­stick rack for a holy thing she was bringing. • They did what she directed, and she traced a design with her finger on the smoothed earth of the altar. • She showed them how to do all this, then circled the lodge again sunwise. Halting before the chief, she now opened the bundle. the holy thing it contained was the chanunpa, the sacred pipe. • She held it out to the people and let them look at it. She was grasping the stem with her right hand and the bowl with her left, and thus the pipe has been held ever since.

24. The White Buffalo Woman showed the people how to use the pipe. • She filled it with chan­shasha, red willow­bark tobacco. She walked around the lodge four times after the manner of Anpetu­Wi, the great sun. • This represented the circle without end, the sacred hoop, the road of life. • The woman placed a dry buffalo chip on the fire and lit the pipe with it. This was peta­owihankeshini , the fire without end, the flame to be passed on from generation to generation. • She told them that the smoke rising from the bowl was Tunkashila's breath, the living breath of the great Grandfather Mystery.

25. The White Buffalo Woman showed the people the right way to pray, the right words and the right gestures. • She taught them how to sing the pipe­filling song and how to lift the pipe up to the sky, toward Grandfather, and down toward Grandmother Earth, to Unci, and then to the four directions of the universe. • "With this holy pipe," she said, "you will walk like a living prayer. With your feet resting upon the earth and the pipestem reaching into the sky, your body forms a living bridge between the Sacred Beneath and the Sacred Above. Wakan Tanka smiles upon us, because now we are as one: earth, sky, all living things, the two legged, the four­legged, the winged ones, the trees, the grasses. Together with the people, they are all related, one family. The pipe holds them all together."

26. "Look at this bowl," said the White Buffalo Woman. "Its stone represents the buffalo, but also the flesh and blood of the red man. The buffalo represents the universe and the four directions, because he stands on four legs, for the four ages of man. The buffalo was put in the west by Wakan Tanka at the making of the world, to hold back the waters. Every year he loses one hair, and in every one of the four ages he loses a leg. The Sacred Hoop will end when all the hair and legs of the great buffalo are gone, and the water comes back to cover the Earth. • The wooden stem of this chanunpa stands for all that grows on the earth. Twelve feathers hanging from where the stem­ the backbone­ joins the bowl­ the skull­ are from Wanblee Galeshka, the spotted eagle, the very sacred who is the Great Spirit's messenger and the wisest of all cry out to Tunkashila . Look at the bowl: engraved in it are seven circles of various sizes. They stand for the seven ceremonies you will practice with this pipe, and for the Ocheti Shakowin , the seven sacred campfires of our Lakota nation."

27. The White Buffalo Woman then spoke to the women, telling them that it was the work of their hands and the fruit of their bodies which kept the people alive. "You are from the mother earth," she told them. "What you are doing is as great as what warriors do." • The White Buffalo Woman had many things for her Lakota sisters in her sacred womb bag; corn, wasna (pemmican), wild turnip. She taught how to make the hearth fire. She filled a buffalo paunch with cold water and dropped a red­hot stone into it. "This way you shall cook the corn and the meat," she told them.

28. The White Buffalo Woman also talked to the children • She told them: "You are the coming generation, that's why you are the most important and precious ones. Some day you will hold this pipe and smoke it. Some day you will pray with it."

29. She teaches them THE SEVEN RITES • · The Keeping of the Soul • · Inipi: The Rite of Purification • · Hanblecheyapi: Crying for a Vision • · iwanyag Wachipi: The Sun Dance • · Hunkapi: The Making of Relatives • · Ishna Ta Awi Cha Lowan: Preparing a Girl for Womanhood • · Tapa Wanka Yap: Throwing of the Ball

30. She spoke one last time saying, "Remember: this pipe is very sacred. Respect it and it will take you to the end of the road. The four ages of creation are in me; I am the four ages. I will come to see you in every generation cycle. I shall come back to you." • The sacred woman then took leave of the people, saying: " Toksha ake wacinyanitin ktelo, I shall see you again." • The people saw her walking off in the same direction from which she had come, outlined against the red ball of the setting sun. • As she went, she stopped and rolled over four times. The first time, she turned into a black buffalo; the second into a brown one; the third into a red one; and finally, the fourth time she rolled over, she turned into a white female buffalo calf. A white buffalo is the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter.

31. In 1933 a white buffalo calf was born in Colorado, and in 1994 another one, named Miracle, was born in Janesville, Wisconsin. Thousands of people of many different faiths have visited Miracle, testifying that her birth is a call for all races to come together to heal the earth and solve our mutual problems. • On 9 May 1996, a silvery­white buffalo calf named Medicine Wheel was born at the ranch of Joe Merrival on the Pine Ridge reservation of South Dakota. Another white calf, Rainbow, had been born in the same herd on 27 April. It died 25 hours later of scours, a diarrhea­type condition.

32. White Painted Woman

33. Southwest

34. The Great Flood & The Abalone Shell

35. Sunrise Dance

36. The Apache Sunrise Ceremony or na'ii'ees  is an arduous communal four-day ceremony that Apache girls of the past and present experience soon after their first menstruation. • Through numerous sacred ceremonies, dances, songs, and enactments, the girls become imbued with the physical and spiritual power of White Painted Woman, and embrace their role as women of the Apache nation. 

37. For most of the four days and nights, to songs and prayers, they dance, as well as run toward the four directions. During this time, they also participate in and conduct  sacred rituals, receiving and giving both gifts and blessings, and experiencing their own capacity to heal. 

38. In the early 1900s, when the U.S. government banned Native American spiritual practices and rituals, conducting the Sunrise Ceremony was an illegal act; as a result, its practice diminished, and those ceremonies that did occur were conducted secretly.  • Not until 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed, was the Sunrise Ceremony openly re-established on most reservations. The families of girls entering puberty in a particular year may also sponsor joint Sunrise ceremonies, in which two or more newly menstruating girls celebrate the rites of Changing Women together.

39. The first woman, White Painted Woman (also known as Esdzanadehe, and Changing Woman) survives the great Flood in an abalone shell, then wanders the land as the waters recede. • Atop a mountain, she is impregnated by the sun, and gives birth of a son, Killer of Enemies. Soon afterwards, she is impregnated by the Rain, and gives birth to Son of Water. 

40. However, the world the People live in is not safe until White Painted Woman's sons kill the Owl Man Giant who has been terrorizing the tribe. When they return from their victory, bringing the meat they have hunted, White Painted Woman expresses a cry of triumph and delight, which later will be echoed by the godmother at the Sunrise Ceremony. • She then is guided by spirits to establish a puberty rite to be given for all daughter born to her people, and to instruct the women of the tribe in the ritual, and the rites of womanhood.

41. When she becomes old, White Painted Woman walks east toward the sun until she meets her younger self, merges with it, and becomes young again. Thus repeatedly, she is born again and again, from generation to generation.

42. The Sunrise Ceremony serves many purposes - personally, spiritually and communally - and is often one of the most memorable and significant experiences of Apache females today, just as it was for Apache women in the past. • By re-enacting the Creation myth, and personifying White Painted Woman, the girl connects deeply to her spiritual heritage, which she experiences, often for the first time, as the core of her self. • In her connection to Changing Woman/ White Painted Woman,  she gains command over her weaknesses and the dark forces of her nature, and knows her own spiritual power, sacredness and her goodness. She also  may discover her own ability to heal.

43. She learns about what it means to become a woman, first through attunement to the physical manifestations of womanhood such as as menstruation (and learning about sexuality), as well as the development of physical strength and endurance. • The rigorous physical training she must go through in order to survive four days of dancing and running is considerable, and surviving and triumphing during the "sacred ordeal" strengthens her both physically and emotionally. • Most Apache women who have experienced the Sunrise Ceremony say afterwards that it significantly increased their self-esteem and confidence. When it ended, they no longer felt themselves to be a child; they truly experienced themselves as "becoming woman."

44. The Apache girl entering womanhood experiences the interpersonal and communal manifestations of womanhood in her culture - the necessity to work hard, to meet the needs and demands of others, to exercise her power for others' benefit, and to present herself to the world, even when suffering or exhausted, with dignity and a pleasant disposition. Her temperament during the ceremony is believed to be the primary indicator of her temperament throughout her future life.  • Not only does she give to the community - food, gifts, healings, blessings, but she also joyfully receives from the community blessings, acceptance and love. Throughout the ceremony, she receives prayers and heartfelt wishes for prosperity, wellbeing, fruitfulness, a long life, and a healthy old age. 

45. The Sunrise ceremony serves the community as well as the girls entering womanhood. It brings extended families and tribes together, strengthening clan obligations, reciprocity and emotional bonds, and deepening the Apache's connection to his or her own spiritual heritage.