How and why do the Lakota life cycle and social structure differ from the Hindu life cycle and social structure?
chl6625Who are the Oglala?
The Oglala are one band of the Lakota, Lakota meaning "allied people." The Lakota in turn are one large group of the great plains nation called the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Fireplaces. This nation is divided into the Lakota, the Dakota, and the Nakota, but all three think of themselves as coming from the one great nation of the Seven Fireplaces. (Though they may never have actually been very unified.) This nation is often called the "Sioux."
Rituals
First, the sacred pipe, the Buffalo Calf Pipe. This the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought to the Lakota first, and appropriately it comes first, before all the other rituals. The pipe is offered and smoked before every one of the Seven Sacred Ceremonies and before any important decision or action of the Lakota Nation and of individual traditional Lakotas. It is the single most intimate and yet most social way for Lakotas to contact the sacred.
The Seven Sacred Ceremonies:
Vision quest: a four day fast, alone in a sacred place, to receive power through a vision. Wakan persons do this yearly or more often
Ghost keeping: ghost of recently dead stays for six months or longer around home; the ritual ensures its return to the spirit world. This requires a family giving away possessions, traditionally, all of them
Making of relatives: makes a new relationship, closer than kin, of older and younger persons (sometimes more than one pair); they are covered with one blanket and bound together by a wakan person
Buffalo Ceremony: here a girl becomes a woman, she is instructed in new obligations and comes into a new relationship with White Buffalo Calf Woman
Throwing the ball: ball symbolized wakan tanka; people try to catch it to be close. Girls, too, would play this
Sun dance: huge circle of many bands, the only calendrical ritual, thus the renewal of whole people; pledging ahead, men and women at once
• the greatest ritual in theory and the most elaborate in practice
• a ritual of return/rebirth for culture. Parallels the vision quest for individuals
• also, the social dimension powerful here. The Sun Dance binds (re-ligare) the Seven Fireplaces in a sacred unity which is also political and social
• for dancers a sacrifice of very self to wakan tanka
• so powerful that much healing goes on, especially near the sacred ttree which is the center of the cosmos and the people, the most sacred place
The Life Cycle
Traditionally divided into four ages, four being the most sacred number for the Lakota. Here the ages are childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Each age has its role to play in the society.
Childhood
• Babies as wakan, newly arrived visitors from the sacred realm
• Played many games, girls equally with boys. These teach social values
• Throwing the Ball most important: a small child throws it
• At this stage also learning through stories. Generosity, the primary Lakota virtue learned very young and children encouraged to give away their own items
• Hunka ceremony, Making of Relatives, often happens at this time
Adolescence
• Buffalo Ceremony begins adolescence. Here the girl becomes a woman and is instructed in the virtues of womanhood. She learns skills, is protected from men, and can even strive for a vision. She becomes more sacred as she is associated with White Buffalo Calf Woman, including the important notion that she is sexually alluring yet sexually pure, a virgin
• Virgins were essential to the Sun Dance, cutting down the sacred tree. They symbolized the purity and harmony of the whole culture
Adulthood
• Marriage the crucial change. Wife goes to live with husband's band or group, but only as long as he can support her. She must be supported or goes home
• Sometimes co-wives, but this unusual and difficult
• Possibility of divorce and roughly equal punishments for infidelity
• Men do share in camp work when possible, but their first duty is protection. This is why, for example, men go first when camp moves: it is not sexism but so they might protect the tribe from possible dangers encountered
• Women care for the children. This makes sense as children around camp. But men also participate when able
• Women participated in the Sun Dance by cutting circles of skin from their arms
Old Age
• Grandmothers crucial in raising children
• Grandmothers seen as being wakan as they had received all the old wisdom and because they were close to being in the spirit world
• Grandfathers and grandmothers were thus central to the preservation of the Lakota society, the repositors of culture. They might be compared to walking libraries, especially the story-tellers, the shamans, and the medicine persons
• Women seen also as more loving and family-oriented, so naturally they did the funeral work, and were the chief mourners
• The dead person kept all his or her favorite possessions and was given new moccasins and dried food for the Ghost Road to the spirit world
• Old women frequently became medicine women or curing women
• Ghost Keeping often done by older persons since often done for dead children