Dancing with shadows.

Anyone presuming that native spiritually is alike and only a fracture of ancient relic's, not valid in today's modern concerns, are mistaken. Like all cultures and religions, also the Native American spirituality has changed with time, and after the Europeans came to The Secret Land, this cultural and spiritual change was speeded up, and made a chaotic and painful path in Native America's history.

But, the religion of the Native Americans is adaptable, vital and strong, and due to this, it has survived, some in the close to ancient forms, others made changes. The prayers, rituals, ceremonies and the way of performance are divided not alike, all tribes do have a spirituality according to their own history and are not performed identical all over America, like most outsiders might believe. (Especially helped by movies, romanticizing or plain false information) Today, the religion of these people are living, it's a faith, and life is a spiritual experience.  Outsiders often see the Native religiosity as Medicinmen, peacepipes, peyote, kachinas and visions of an old man. This is a misconception. There are hundreds of Native American cultures within the area of today's United States, Canada and Mexico. (Also of course South America)

In the American Southwest, you will find ceremonial dances connected to the agricultural cycle, at the Great Planes, you'll find the individual religious quest. In the Southeast you'll find the Green Corn Dance and at Iroquois tribal dances, you find the False Face Dance, where the people were masks. This is only a fraction of the variety, but a good example to understand the differences. You also, of course have the healing Shaman, like in ALL Native cultures of the World.

Birth, youth, marriage, all the faces of life until death are a religious path, the whole lifecycle is a religious journey and path. All rites practiced in the variety of language, history and belonging.

When the Europeans came, they brought The White Christ, and this made a great crisis for the old tribal spirituality, some choose to take in some of the new faith, others rejected it promptly. But, a lot of new path of religiosity , you can call it the New Age of the Native People, grew up around in the waste territory of Indian Nations (indians- Columbus thought he found the passage to India, and therefore called the people he met at San Salvador in the year 1492, for Indians.) Some was Smohalla's Dreamer Cult, spreading among the tribes of the Northwest around 1850, and the opposite, The Iroquois religious revival of Handsome Lake, was absolutely non-Christian.

All the movements was a way of handling the tragedy of the Native American people after the European settlers came into their land.

The movement most known; was the Ghost Dance movement...sweeping over the North Plains in the 1880, close to the lost battle of Natives in America. The Ghost Dance was founded by a man called Wovoka, a Peiute, in January 1889. He had visions that told him that the whites was to go, and the  land and the buffalo would appear again as it was long time ago, untouched by the colonizers hands. The essence of the movement was that the people should dance, go into trance, not use alcohol, make fights or quarrels, but live in peace.

The Ghost Dance died at Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890, with nearly 300 women, children and men, old as young, massacred by US soldiers. Still we can find photos of this tragedy's result, and the most hurting and sad is the one of the old and very ill Chief Big Foot, lying with his hands stretched up before him, dead and frozen stiff to the ground.

Today , still some parts of the Ghost Dance has survived and are performed among a number of tribal communities, but maybe with less emphasis on the idea of the end of the world. (White man's world)

One of the most influential movements after the 1880' was and is the Peyote religion of the Native American Church. This religion was introduced among the North American Natives from chiefs, and itinerant leaders from Mexico late in  the 19th century.

The ceremonial drug is taken from peyote cactus, and eaten. It gives a hallucionary impact, used in sacramental means. Peyote meetings are often held in tepees, and the men sits around an earthen, crescentshaped altar, with a large piece of peyotecactus button on it, called : "father of peyote." (Father Peyote) The Peyotists have been in continuously battle with the Federal Government and battled in court, and hearings , the right to use the drug in sacramental ceremonies. In 1918, the Native American Church was finally established, in hope to make the peyote use legal. But as late as in the 1990' the US Supreme Court decided to not be co-operable in this case...and it's ironically no problems to the fact that the US never had any problems with destroying the Native People with alcohol....and it kept the Natives effectually down in the dirt for 100- 150  years, too addicted to make any serious problems, at least the last way of taking out the fighting spirit was of course alcohol.

The members of the Native American Church are conservative and no drugadicts, like many want it to be viewed as. And they are strongly community oriented people. The peyote is used for healing, spiritual travel, and sacraments.

Native American Christianity is as adopted in many ways, as in South American tribes. But it is different ways, some are like white Christians in most , others are more in the border of native believe.

Native American Spirituality.

Very general themes from all tribespeople and beliefs in Native America, and the  entrance for the outsider. It is because it has a strong appeal to non-natives, and  one of the pillars of so called New Age movements of non-native people. The center of the Native American Spirituality is located at the Northern Plains, and much of it's roots comes from books like "Black Elk speaks" and "The Sacred Pipe."