Native American religions, Native American faith, or American Indian religions are the Indigenous spiritual practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Ceremonial practices involve sacred, spiritual, cultural traditions that can differ slightly among the indigenous groups of the continent. Early European explorers describe some communities, now labelled Native American tribes in the United States and small First Nations or bands in Canada, as each having unique religious practices. The religions' theologies may be monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic, animistic, shamanistic, pantheistic, or any combination thereof, among others. Traditional beliefs are usually passed down in the oral tradition forms of myths, oral histories, stories, allegories, and principles. Nowadays, as scholars note, many American Natives are having a renewed interest in their own traditions.
Overview
Native American religions were prevalent in the pre-Columbian era and included state religions. A concept common among the religions is the existence of a supernatural world of deities, spirits and wonders, such as the Algonquian (, ) or the Lakota , (), as well as Great Spirit, Fifth World, world tree, and the red road among many Indians.
Before Christianization occurred, in most American religions, there was a supreme God, a creator or teacher, such as the Inca god Viracocha, or a sky deity (e.g., ) from whom all other spiritual beings manifest or emanate (e.g., the Pawnee god Tirawa). The supreme being is closely associated with the World Tree, or world pole/pillar—the central cultic symbol in the great rites of the main regions, especially of Northern America. Other traditional pre-Modern religious rites were hunting, gathering, planting, and war ceremonies. Today, many practitioners of Native American religions do not consider religion to be a separate sphere from everyday life and include politics, law, health, education, and environmental stewardship as part of their religious life.
During the 16th–21st centuries, Native American spirituality had numerous new indigenist revitalization movements that divided to fundamentalist and reform.
Generally fundamentalist movements favoured a return to traditional ways and rejected the changes brought by the modern states; in North America they include the Pueblo Revolt (1680s), the Shawnee Prophet Movement (1805–1811), the Cherokee Prophet Movement (1811–1813), the Red Stick War (1813–1814), White Path's Rebellion (1826), the Winnebago Prophet Movement (1830–1832), the first Ghost Dance (1869–1870) and the second Ghost Dance (1889–1890), and the Snake movements among the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Muscogee Creek Indians during the 1890s.
Generally, syncretic reform movements include the Yaqui Religion (1500–present), the Longhouse Religion (1797–present), the Munsee Prophetess Movement (1804–1805), the Kickapoo Prophet Movement (1815–present), the Cherokee Keetoowah Society (1858–present), the Washat Dreamers Religion (1850–present), the Indian Shakers (1881–present), the Native American Church (1800s–present), the Shoshoni Sun Dance (1890–present), the New Tidings religion or Wocekiye of the Canadian Sioux (1900–present), and Ojibwe Drummer Movement (contemporary).
Beginning in the 1600s, European Christians, both Catholics and those of various Protestant denominations, sought to convert Native American tribes from their pre-existing beliefs to Christianity. After the United States gained independence in the late 1700s, its government continued to suppress Indigenous practices and promote forcible conversion. American and Canadian government agencies and religious organizations often cooperated in these forcible conversion efforts. In many cases, violence was used as a tool of suppression, as in the government's violent eradication of Ghost Dance and Sun Dance practitioners in the 1890s. Thus, Canada lifted its prohibition against the practice of the Sun Dance full ceremony only in 1951.
By the turn of the 20th century, the American government began to turn to less violent means of suppressing Native American religious beliefs. A series of federal laws banned traditional Indigenous practices such as feasts, Sun Dance ceremonies, and the use of the sweat lodge, among others. This government persecution and prosecution officially continued until 1978 with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), although it has been argued that the AIRFA had little real effect on the protection of Native religious beliefs.Public Law No. 95-341, 92 Stat. 469 (Aug. 11, 1978)
Another significant system of religious suppression was the removal of Native American children from their families into a system of government-funded and Christian church-operated American Indian boarding schools (also known as residential schools). In these schools, Native children were forced through violence and oppression to learn European Christian beliefs, the values of mainstream white culture, and the English language, while simultaneously being forbidden to speak their own languages and practice their own cultural beliefs. This system of forcible conversion and suppression of Indigenous languages and cultures continued through the 1970s.Hall, Anna (12-16-2013) "Time for Acknowledgement: Christian-Run Native American Boarding Schools Left Legacy of Destruction" in SojournersSmith, Andrea (March 26, 2007) "Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools " in Amnesty International MagazineBoxer, Andrew (2009) "Native Americans and Federal Government" in History Review
Some non-Native anthropologists estimate membership in traditional Native American religions in the 21st century to be about 9000 people. Since Native Americans practicing traditional ceremonies do not usually have public organizations or membership rolls, these "members" estimates are likely substantially lower than the actual numbers of people who participate in traditional ceremonies. Native American spiritual leaders also note that these academic estimates substantially underestimate the numbers of participants because a century of U.S. federal government persecution and prosecutions of traditional ceremonies caused believers to practice their religions in secrecy. Many adherents of traditional spiritual ways also attend Christian services, at least some of the time, which can also affect statistics. Since the 80 years of those prior legal persecutions ended with AIRFA, some sacred sites in the United States are now protected areas under law.
Regional and pan-Native traditions
Alaska and Far North
The living in the North American Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska Natives and many Indigenous peoples in Canada mainly practice hunter-gatherer religious cults. Traditional Alaskan shamanism involve mediation between people and spirits, souls, and other immortal beings.Texts of mythology Sacred text.com. Retrieved 2013-01-26.
Western North America
Western North America includes such cultural areas as Northwest Coast, Plateau, Great Basin, and a region of the Indigenous peoples of California.
Earth Lodge Religion The Earth Lodge Religion was founded in northern California and southern Oregon tribes such as the Wintun. It spread to tribes such as the Achomawi, Shasta, and Siletz, to name a few. It was also known as the "Warm House Dance" among the Pomo. It predicted occurrences similar to those predicted by the Ghost Dance, such as the return of ancestors or the world's end. The Earth Lodge Religion impacted the later religious practice, the Dream Dance, belonging to the Klamath and the Modoc.
Washat Dreamers Religion
The Washat Dreamers Religion, also called the Waashat Religion/Faith, the Waasaní (Washani) Religion, Seven Drum Religion, and the Longhouse religion (separate from the Iroquois Longhouse religion) is a faith still persisting in some modern Native communities. Washani, meaning "dancers" or "worship", was a reform response to pressures from American settlers at the time for Natives to relocate or become "civilized". The Wanapum Indian Smohalla (c. 1815 – 1895) originally built the religion in 1850 in the Columbia River region of modern-day Washington, and over time it has spread across the Pacific Northwest. Smohalla claimed that he had received visions in his dreams, where he had visited the spirit world and had been sent back to teach his people. He preached a reform return to the original way of life of hunter-gatherer lifestyle as opposed to agriculturalism, before the influence of colonizers, emphasizing abstinence from alcohol and cleansing themselves of white influences. Smohalla was sometimes called Yuyunipitqana, meaning "Shouting Mountain", because it was said that his wisdom came from a mountain speaking within his soul.
The religion combined elements of Christianity with Native beliefs, teaching similar origin stories as Catholicism and holding Sunday as a holy day, while still ultimately pushing away from the so-called civilized man that white people idealized. Despite this, Smohalla rejected the Christian Puritanical ideal of a strong work ethic and plowing the land. Two notable quotes of Smohalla's "You ask me to plough the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom?" and "My young men shall never work. Men who work can not dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams," demonstrates these tenets. The Native-inspired elements of the religion involved the Waashat Dance, a dance which involves seven drummers, a salmon feast, use of eagle and swan feathers and a sacred song sung every seventh day.
The Dreamer Faith foreshadowed the later Ghost Dances of the plains peoples, another religion which sought to rid Natives of white people and their influences through peaceful religion. These kinds of religions made it difficult to assimilate or control the tribes by the United States, as the U.S. was trying to convert the Plains tribes from hunter-gatherers to farmers; farming was believed to be more civilized and a better use of the land. They wanted to remake the Natives, but found a problem with those who followed the Waashat Religion: "Their model of a man is an Indian; They aspire to be Indian and nothing else." (T. B. Odeneal) Smohalla was eventually jailed in an effort to quell a potential uprising of Native peoples, but his religion has continued to survive without him.
Indian Shaker Church
Also known as Tschida, the Indian Shaker Church was influenced by the Waashat Religion and founded by John Slocum, a Squaxin Island member. The name comes from the shaking and twitching motions used by the participants to brush off their sins. The religion combines Christianity with traditional Indian teachings.
Great Plains
The Great Plains is home to religious traditions of more than fifty Plains Indians nations that are some of the most varied and complex in Northern America.
Ghost Dance
The Ghost Dance movement of the late 1800s was a religious revitalization movement in the Western United States. Initially founded as a local ceremony in Nevada, by the Paiute prophet Wodziwob, the movement did not gain widespread popularity until 1889–1890, when the Ghost Dance Religion was founded by Wovoka (Jack Wilson), who was also Northern Paiute. The Ghost Dance was created in a time of genocide, to save the lives of the Native Americans by enabling them to survive the current and coming catastrophes, by calling the dead to fight on their behalf, and to help them drive the colonists out of their lands.