During the beginning of the 20th century, Native American tradition, art, and culture was suppressed by governmental bans of Native American customs. One of the commonly misunderstood forms of these Native American customs is dance, which plays a significant role in Indigenous tradition. It was viewed at the time as threatening and hostile as many referred to Indigenous dance as a “war dance” without understanding that each dance holds different importance's. The bans of these kinds of cultural expressions ultimately leads to the decline of knowledge and possible extinction of tradition. In book Reginald and Gladys Laubin, American Indian Dancers by Starr Jones, Reginald and Gladys Laubin, married cultural historians, decide to partake in…
Savanna Taylor Ms. Teichman English 101 (15) 19 September 2016 ‘The Ghost Dance’ It is true to say that different communities in the world became rebellious to the European civilization especially on religious matters. In this case, also the Indians in Western America had to have a rebellious cult that would enlighten their struggle from the hands of the European invader. The Indians of America and mostly from Western Great Basin hence began a cult that was known as ‘the ghost dance’ or Natdia in native America (Weiser). The ghost dance emerged in the 1870s and was purposely brought about to unite the Indians and enable them rebel against the Indian reservations.…
Prairie Band Potawatomie 2017 Pow Wow Dance is an expressive language that often goes beyond most expectations of non-verbal communication. No less can be said of the Prairie Band Potawatomie 2017 Pow…
Indians facing persecution turn to Native American religion and practice traditional sacred ceremonies in order to escape the reality of the psychological and physical mistreatment they face within American society. Mary Crow Dog was a Sioux Indian of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. (Pg.5) As a child Crow Dog attended the St. Francis boarding school where Indian children were forced to assimilate and faced with punishment if they disobeyed. (Pg.4) Crow Dog became involved with the American Indian Movement as a teenager and participated in some monumental movements in the 1970’s, including the Trail of Broken Treaties and the siege at Wounded Knee.…
On Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 8:00 pm, I have attended a performance by Joy Harjo and her friends Mitch Taylor who played the guitar, Dave Copenhaver who played the bass guitar, and Smiling’ Vic Gutierrez who played the drums and vocals. I had specifically chose this performance to do my report on because I wanted to feel what actual Native American music would be like in concert as opposed to what we naturally think of when it comes to Native American music. For me, that would include heavy drumming and dancing, which are usually even-pulsed with a variety of vocables. Not to my disappointment, the music was unique in its own way and had spoke directly to me.…
86% on paperrater In the novel “The Lakota Way”, written by historian, writer, teacher, craftsman, administrator, actor, and public speaker, Joseph M. Marshall III, is a story about the ways of the Lakotas. Within the book, there was twelve core qualities taught, such as; bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion. Of these twelve qualities, I feel as though sacrifice, bravery, and wisdom are the uttermost powerful admonitions to learn from this book. From this book the reader learns the way of life and what a vast amount of the Native American people lived by.…
For this paper, I will be looking at the musical expression of the Yurok and Yaqui tribes of Native North America. There are two major types of musical expression for the Yurok, world renewal dances, and medicine songs. Both of types of music are sacred and hold a prominent place in Yurok society. For the purpose of this paper, I am going to focus on the world renewal dances because they provide interesting similarities and differences to Yaqui Deer songs. Yaqui Deer songs can be sung by themselves, but they provide the most amount of information about the Yaqui culture and religion when they are performed within the context of the Deer Dance, which is a night-long dance that originally preceded a deer hunt.…
Chapter Four, Legal Religion, talks about how religion freedoms are handled under the law. Sullivan expresses that religious ideas are free to be thought, however when put into practice, religious beliefs can be limited by the government. She talks about the difficulties presented by the American Legal system, for example the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which claim to protect varying religious beliefs, but in turn discriminate against religions not of the unsaid Protestant majority. To emphasize her argument, Sullivan provides cases such as Employment Divisionv. Smith, Warner v. City of Boca Raton, U.S. v. Seeger, and Africa v. Pennsylvania.…
The Dama, or the African Mask Dance, has been performed for hundreds of years however is only performed every sixty years as it is based on a celestial cycle that refers to a star that circles around Sirius (Rik Pinxten, 2015). It is a significant part of the African history to follow this particular celestial cycles. The Dama is a ritual dance for the Dogon Tribe of Mali, situated in West Africa. This essay will examine and analyse the movement and non-movement components within the dance. It will also analyse how this ritual dance preserves the Dogon Tribe’s culture and history.…
Why Suya Sing, a musical anthropology of an Amazonian people, is a book written by Anthony Seeger. Anthony Seeger is a professor, ethnomusicologist, archivist, anthropologist, and record producer. The title “Why Suya Sing” portrays the general idea of all ethnomusicologists, which is to further understand music in its cultural context (“What Is Ethnomusicology?”). Seeger is also the director emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The author tackled field research for the book at Mato Grosso, Brazil, during 1971 and 1982.…
I have always imagined that there was more to the culture and history of Native Americans than just what I was taught in school; for that reason, In the Hands of the Great Spirit by Jake Page attracted me. Although I realized that a book about the twenty thousand year history of Native Americans would be like reading a textbook, which is not something I do during my free time, I considered the fact that I would actually learn more about a topic that is not “properly” taught in school. One of the biggest topics that I explored in this book was Native American culture; this is an aspect that I had never been taught anywhere else, but that Jake Page really illuminates with myths and pictures placed throughout the book. In addition to that, I…
The Native American tribes now created War Dances, that were all based on prior drum dance customs, to dance around their drum…
“Potawatomi oral tradition tell of three brothers: Ojibwe, the oldest, was the faith keeper, Odaawa, the middle brother, handled trade; Bodewadmi, the youngest, kept the Sacred Fires lit” (Loew, 2001, p. 99). Different tribes had different practices of religion and beliefs. A specific song and dance was associated with each family (Loew, 2001). Specific rituals and types of knowledge on medicines and ceremonies were different according to the family. In the Potawatomi tribe, their “culture hero was Mana’bozo who was considered the founder of their religious cult” (Smith).…
Breakdancing marked the beginning of the hip-hop movement in dance. It consisted of unique styles and movements that still exist in breakdancing today. Breakdancing, or “b-boying” rapidly grew since the 1970s and is popular amongst many street dancers today. The history behind breakdancing derived mainly from Puerto Rican and African American dancers in New York. These dancers brought different movements and terminology within breakdancing that are very iconic within this style of dance.…
The article Body Ritual among the Nacirema by Horace Miner is about culture and rituals. Culture is defined as “a system of ideas, values, beliefs, knowledge, norms, customs, and technology shared by almost everyone in a particular society” (Basirico, Cashion, and Eshleman 99). In other words, it’s a way of life in society or a specific geographical area. According to the author, Nacirema is between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui, and Tarahumare of Mexico, which offer the readers some insight of the true meaning of the text.…