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Protection of Ceremony: Cheyenne Seek to Change Freedom of Religion Act April
30, 2003 My Major concern is that Native Spirituality never evolves into a Hierarchy! The Aztecs had a priesthood and it destroyed their Nation. The Spanish Wah shi chu came along and easily subdued them. (They had the ethusiastic, willing help of all the surrounding tribes whose children were the Aztec's victims!) Go to Central America and see how proud the Mexicans are of being Indio. They actually deny who they are. What the Catholic Church failed to convey to them while brutally converting them was that they themselves were doing the same thing as the Aztec priests were doing at the same time in their history. The burning at the stake and torturing of millions in the 3 Great Inquisitions were no less heinous than the human sacrifices of the Aztec priests. People were being brutally killed and in the Christian situation, tortured before being murdered all over a hierarchal priest, bishop or Pope dictating that they, themselves, knew directly Creator's teachings, words, interpretations, etc. See Malleus Maleficarum, the best selling book of its time. This is the Great Danger of a hierarchy or a priesthood. It lives to sustain itself and seeks to gather power and control. The Northern Indians never allowed such a thing and wound up living dignified, highly moral lives and came up with the world's greatest gift from mankind to mankind- Democracy!!!! American Indians, Northern Ones at least, never state who EXACTLY, Creator is or try and explicitly define or describe the Great Mystery. We Sioux (Lakota, Dakota) call the Ultimate One, Wakan Tanka, which means Great Mystery, Great Holy, or the Beyond One. It has a whole host of names, the Creator, the Ultimate Maker, the Benevolent Entity, the Unknown, etc. but no true traditional will try to describe explicitly other than it is way beyond any definition by human. We are the only real honest religion/spirituality when you really get down to it compared to all the other religions who are constantly fighting each other because they explicitly "know" who Creator is. We Sioux were the last of the major tribes to "come in" and hence preserved our culture, our ceremonies and our language. Be honest. Most tribes lost their culture to a great extent. The Sioux have only been "in" for a hundred years. It is not difficult to understand why tribes who have been 200 and 300 years under and with the Wahshichu have severely lost their culture, language and religion. Those Sioux who remained in North Carolina, (Cawtaba, Waccama) where we migrated from have lost their language, religion and culture. They are all bonafide Christians. I visited them and found this out. (Note: As an older Lakota, I am more comfortable with the word Sioux, contrary to Academics.) What I have learned from the Sioux holymen I was under, they also never had a Devil or a Satan. They could not believe a Benevolent Creator would ever make such a thing or allow it. Why in the hell would an All -Powerful Entity have need for such a thing? Look at all IT has given us in our lives to live here upon Ina Makah! So many signs are there that IT is truly Benevolent and Providing. To a Traditional Sioux, it is an insult to the All Providing One to state that this Devil thing and its fiery hell is created by the Great Entity. Yet the Christians use it to control you. This may disappoint many of you, but if you knew the real old timers, such a thing came from the white man and now I find, the Islams also have such a foolish superstition. I say simply, "How many of you have seen it?" I know only one thing explicitly. I will never see it and not even the Christians can show me one. I have even asked them. They can never come up with one. Our spirituality is primarily based on what we observe in Nature (Creator's direct creation). If you cannot find a devil here, then why do you believe in it? Your choice not mine. I go back to what I observe and what the old timers say. The hierarchy, priesthood ones, all use pain and fear to control. We Northern People had a rich life for tens of thousands of years. This brief contact with the Wah shi Chu is but a mere drop in the historical bucket of time. Down, down thru time we lived and came up with the greatest gift- that system that allows the most enjoyment of the precious freedoms which the Wamaskaskan, the animal brothers and sisters enjoy. Freedom! Which is also Democracy and no religious hierarchy. Eagle Man, Oglala, OST 15287 Please go to the following pages to get the reactions of the Little Feather Center and other members. E-Mail: wakinyan_wakan@hotmail.com |
