How and why do the Lakota life cycle and social structure differ from the Hindu life cycle and social structure?
chl6625Lakota Responses to Cultural Loss
Last week we looked at how the Lakota are trying to preserve at least some of their traditions in the face of overwhelming difficulties
• They face the impossibility of maintaining their old activities, of practicing the virtues that made them who they were. This is especially true for the men
• They face the racism of the white culture that sees them as primitive and backward
• They face their own experience of four generations of poverty, helplessness, and hopelessness
• Finally, they face their continuing anger at the white culture that has oppressed them, even tried to exterminate them
• All these factors combine to create a situation where the Lakota not only are extremely poorly prepared to succeed on the terms of the white culture, many of them do not even want to
So, in the face of all this, how are Lakota people trying to regain a sense of cultural pride and identity? I suggest they are doing this by focusing on their religious traditions
• Wicasa wakan have been the least touched by cultural degradation because they have been able to stay closest to the old ways. They do not need "jobs" and do not seek them: they already have their calling and it depends on inner resources, not financial ones. They do not even need to be paid with money, but can accept gifts for their services, as they have traditionally done.
• Traditionally religious Lakota have been more comfortable away from the centers of white power and support. For this reason they have maintained strength in two ways. First, they have kept their own sense of power, being more able to support themselves. Second, they have kept the respect of other Lakota who see them as embodying quite literally the power of the old ways. They have followed the Red Road, even while others have followed the Black. Visibly maintaining the good Red Road, they have visibly maintained the pride of the proud Lakota Nation.
I have tried to show the Lakota response to cultural loss is one of rescue. The elders who have preserved the old ways are now at last asked to teach them to a new generation, even two generations, in an effort to recreate a cohesive culture.
To be strong, that culture must teach its values through shared experiences of all its members. To do that it needs not just stories, but rituals, and celebrations, and rites of passage.
Of course the old culture cannot be fully rescued: the brave but aggressive behavior of warriors has no place in contemporary Lakota culture. There is even little opportunity for hunting. It remains to be seen how bravery and stoicism--and especially aggression--can be rechanneled in the future.
Rites of Passage
• accompany (in fact create) changes in social place
• take the person from a secular state to a sacred state, changing her or him, and back to a secular state, different from before
• include most importantly rites of childbirth, maturity, marriage, and death
• have a structure of separation, transition, and incorporation. Each rite of passage has each of these three types of rite within it
• separation usually involves cleansing, change of place and dress, etc.
• transitional rites happen outside society and the normal secular structures of life. The transitional space and the persons and actions within it are powerful and strange; they are wakan. In that state rules are inverted or unenforced; it is a kind of anti-society
• incorporation reintroduces the new person to society, can come back in a higher or better state
• recreate the social bonds of culture. They communicate and reinforce cultural values at the same time that they involve at least two generations of the culture in experiences of power and intimacy. In this way, the culture is carried on
Anglo Responses to Cultural Loss
What about Anglo American culture? What are the rituals and celebrations and rites of passage that this culture has to preserve or needs to create? What do our readings suggest?
• We have no rites of birth in this culture, aside from religious ones, but none of these brings the culture together, and for many even the religious rites are hollow. Babies are not usually put into strong relationships with anyone but their parents. So our culture here loses an opportunity to strengthen its model of the life cycle
• We cut off ourselves from dying in this culture. Frogatt teaches that hospitals reduce death to a physical experience only. Then the person is quickly hidden away and made to look undead and just as quickly hidden again forever
• Frogatt's article shows how hospices reclaim the journey of death. They treat dying as a rite of passage, complete with its rites of separation, transition, and reincorporation. The latter not so much for the dying person as for the family that must grieve their loss and go on. So our culture denies aging, then denies death, but there is a growing movement to acknowledge it and to give it its power as the last journey of life
• The one place our culture still provides strong rites of passage is in marriage. Here we have many small rituals that add up to a powerful transition to married life. These include rites of separatio, of transition, and of reincorporation. This strengthens marriages and the culture itself
• The most important rite of passage is for adolescents as they become adults. Here our culture fails abysmally and in this failure is destroying itself
• What do we have now? Delaney's article mentions the peer initiation of "first times" for smoking, drinking, and having sex. But these are done away from the eyes of adults. They are in fact not part of taking responsibility for supposedly valued adult activities, but for avoiding them. Yet is it not totally obvious that these activities are actually deeply valued by adults too? But adults are not part of this process, wisdom does not enter into the teaching. Respect for the older generation is not fostered because the older generation is not present to help and guide teenagers through these experiences.
• And there are darker initiations on the street. Many of you know better than I the reality of gangs. Gangs exist to fill a void, to provide meaning and power for teenagers, especially male teenagers. They are serious and they do create real cultural values, but they are not sustainable values for the whole culture
• Something more positive is needed. High school graduation is not it, either. It has the trappings of a rite of passage, but it does not go deep enough. Just as high school has the form of a liminal period but does not teach enough, does not teach cultural virtues of real value
• So, what can we do in the absence of such important rites of passage? We can let teenagers create their own, or we can create new ones, appropriate ones from other cultures, make deeper the ones that still cling to life
• Several of the articles we read propose new urban rites building on the old rites of local religions. One mentions the Sun Dance, two mention the vision quest. Can these work in our society? It is too early to tell. Perhaps they can be combined with religion, as in confirmation. But there are so many religions in our society, even if they were to all create new rites of passage, how will they all work together rather than create a chaos of values?
• It is the next generation that will answer this question. We can't do it today
A Note on The Simpsons
Homer Simpson is an Everyman character. He gets a bad rap for being low, lazy, boorish, selfish, etc.—and he is those things, just as we all are. But he is also sincere, loyal, loving, and honest with himself, just as we try to be. So Homer represents American culture as a whole: he is us. While you watch Homer in this episode, note his choices for his last day and how the day actually turns out. The Simpsons is a comedy, but it always has a message.
Perhaps this class has helped you see similar messages in your own life.