The Ghost Dance Religion Analysis

The religion was a revitalization of Indian heritage; in its essence the reconnection to their ancestors was a way of turning back to “savagery” to the white man, wherein the religion was in fact of living in-between the Native Americans and white men. However in these endeavors of misunderstanding, it was a moderately peaceful religion once Wovoka became its new prophet, the movement reflected the feelings of many Native American as it manifested from the continuous onslaught. Savagery was a view placed on all Native Americans, boarding schools are a good example of this onslaught. As the education policy greatly reflected the Jacksonian era attitude, tearing away children from their homes and families, on the native reservations, to an idealistic perspective about the beneficially …show more content…
The schools did put the language of English into their minds allowed many Native Americans to have a way to communicate with one another, even though they came from different backgrounds. Pan-Indianism, a concept that Native Americans have a general associating factor of cultural identity, that allow them to identify with one another. This generates back to the general loss of identity in Native Americans, which many have found in The Ghost Dance religion, since much of Indian culture is prevalent in family, community, and their ancestors, traditions and religions were communicated orally for they did not have any written languages. Cultural identity was not just the only things lost to them after they were forced off their land into the reservations; they became dependent on the very government they had been fighting. Living in poverty, and no way to get out, with hardly any beneficial help from the government, they have fallen, many of them, into substance