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Native american religion and spirituality
Chapter 2 Native American Religions
Chapter 2 Native American Religions
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Traditions and ceremonies were very important to the Hopi tribe. They did one of many ceremonies called the Soyal ceremony. This happened on the shortest day of the year. Another ceremony or tradition they celebrated was December. The reason why they celebrated this was that it was the day when the Kachinas came down from their homes in the San Francisco Peaks. To bring the sun back to the world. They also did dances, for say a dance like the Kachinas dance at the Winter Solstice.
What the women wore to some of those dances where their fancier dress than what they wore to take care of the children. When they weren't at ceremonies the women's dress went to their knees. That type of clothing was called Mantas. When the, when they weren't
One of the things I found was The clothes worn by the men included loincloths or short kilts which were made from a long rectangular piece of animal skin or cloth which was worn between the legs and tucked over a belt. The men started to wear cotton shirts and shorts, and a headband They wore moccasins made of soft leather. The type of clothes worn by the women of the Hopi tribe were cotton dresses called mantas which were fastened at a woman's right shoulder, leaving her left shoulder bare. Early women’s clothes included a dark blue woollen blanket that was fastened above the right shoulder and tied with a belt at the waist. When Hopi girls reach womanhood, their hair was dressed in two large whorls at the side of the head in a squash blossom.
The Pueblo culture contended many fragments to their culture that varied from the Spaniards Culture. The Native Americans were nature reliant they received all their necessities from the earth. They not only used the land but also thanked the earth. They included over three hundred spirit or gods that the pueblos prayed to for various different reasons, they called them Kachinas. Some of the spirits were Sun god, the rain god, star gods, the wind god and many other divinities. The Natives adore the Kachinas with praise for good crops, good health, family, homes, protection and various other things every day. Customs for the pueblos included rituals to heal problems such as disease in people who are sick, women who are not infertile and many other issues in the tribe. They contained Kivas; kivas were an underground compartment custom for secretive ceremonial practices. The purposes for Kivas were for the Pueblos to get closer to the spirit world. They thought that everything living came from the inferior part of the land. Pu...
Scientists have recently discovered links to the Kiowa and Aztec religions. For example both tribes worshiped a stone image, Taimay, and both tribes followed a pictographic calendar. The language that the Kiowa spoke can be traced back to the Uto-Aztecan language like Latin and English. The Kiowa languages also have connections to the Bannocks, Comanche’s, Paragons, Paiutes, Pima, Shoshones, and Utes. The Kiowa and Aztec preformed many dances of praise including the Sun Dance. However, the Kiowa also had many unique dances including the Scalp, Corning, Feather, and Ghost praising nature and life. Each dance was preformed to celebrate different achievements. For example, the scalp dance was preformed when men returned ...
... middle of paper ... ... Moreover, the power of a god was bestowed upon them only when they were depicted with armor. The women would spend long days on their knees performing their duties.
The Hopi follow a seasonal sense of time. Depending on the season, different preparations were used for collecting the rain. Droughts required the Hopis to adopt new farming methods that are still in use today.
Leading up to the celebration the girls are taught a certain dance that must be performed at the ceremony. “the new initiates are brought into town for the first time since the initiation process began…” At the ceremony the Mende girls wear a Sowei mask and costume which is considered to be the embodiment of the river spirt Sowo. Once the mask and costume is on the person transforms and her actions are no longer hers but are the actions of the spirt Sowo. A sacred dance is performed and dance moves represent the strength and power of woman as members in the Mende community. “Sowo mask are divided into three structural components- the neck, face, and coiffure. Carved from a single block of lightweight wood, the masks weigh only two to four pounds. The mask displays a shiny black surface representative of the value assigned to smooth dark skin.” The rings around the masks neck demonstrates a trait that is considered beautiful in Mende cultures. Every mask has a different hairstyle, representing the style of the woman the mask is made for, you can see items such as shells, metal and claws on the coiffure.
Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between
“Perhaps there is no other group in the world that has quite so diverse and rich culture as that of the Native Americans. With their gilded history that is rich in strife, struggle, and triumph, the Native American culture is indeed very colorful” (Bantwal). Native American culture is very diverse and it has a very colorful history. It is extremely diverse and in fact the term Native American is a broad term that is used to cover all Native tribes in America. Throughout history there has been conflict not only among the different tribes but also there was plenty of fighting against the white men. Much of the fighting between the Native Americans and the white men was due to misunderstandings, mistrust, and miscommunication. Many thousands of years ago “the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska” (History.com). Once they reached Alaska they slowly spread out across the continent of North America. They spread out and separated into different tribes who all have many of the same core ideas but the main thing that separates them is their location in the country. There are Indians from the plains, the pacific coast, the southwest, and the northeast and different locations also. One main idea that is pretty much the same for each tribe is the closeness and respect they show for the land they live on. The history of the Native Americans as a whole is pockmarked by conflict. The conflicts between the tribes were very common and happened because of land disputes or just because of the close proximity of the tribes. But when the white men entered the picture this is where miscommunication and mistrust came into play. The white men wanted the land that...
The clothing that the people of this time wore is very different from today. The people who lived in this time were very conservative in what they wore and how they acted. They were mostly very religious and that also played a huge role in their daily lives. They believed that god judged everything they did so they tried to live life by the bible. Men and women dressed very differently from what they do now. For example men had four essential articles of cloths. The first piece was a shirt or as they called a “camicia”. If you were rich you never just wore the camicia alone because that meant you were just a poor working class man. The second piece of clothing was a “doublet” which is a small jacket that had no sleeves. They would also wear a skirt and knee high socks and a jacket that went down to their knees. The women also wore many layers of clothing. They wore many dresses and they were very big and colorful. They wore shoes that were very weird they were just like high heels today but looked very different. The women would wear a dress that reached to the ground and they wore an outer jacket that was of equal length. The quality of the garment and what it was made of would determine the lady’s social class. The people back the...
Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations.
In Native American communities, there is a great belief in balance and respect. This can be seen in most, if not all, aspects of their lives, from hunting rituals, where they would set aside a period of time around the hunt to thank the animal so that its descendants would still allow themselves to be hunted, to the roles each person plays in the tribe, where each are different, but viewed as equal. This belief remains even in the modern day. In a 2010 survey completed for a dissertation by Randy Woodley, Native American tribes were asked, “Are you familiar with a concept or way of living and being in harmony/balance that relates to many of your Native American values?” To this question, 92.7% of the survey takers answered either “yes” or “somewhat”
During the colonization of the New World, the Native and European cultures left lasting impacts on each other. Many aspects of each culture, such as language, food and health care were affected by their interactions. The cultural diffusion of Europeans and Natives between the 1600s and 1780s had positive and negative effects on the opposing cultures.
Native American Ritual Dancing “It has often been said that the North American Indians ‘dance out’ their religions” (Vecsey 51). There were two very important dances for the Sioux tribe, the Sun Dance and the Ghost Dance. Both dances show the nature of Native American spirituality. The Ghost Dance and the Sun Dance were two very different dances, however both promote a sense of community.
Though my mother and I are Christians, we do not practice our religion very often. My mother and I celebrate Christmas either at our house, the house of a close friend of my mother, or my aunt's house. We usually put up a tree and put presents under the tree like many families do but because my mother is Brazilian and many of my mother's friends are not natural-born Americans, we often eat foreign food not typically eaten. My mom and her sister often make many Brazilian treats and meals including brigadeiros, small chocolate fudge balls dipped in sprinkles, and pao de queijo, a small baked cheese roll. For most other holiday traditions, it is pretty similar to Christmas because like Christmas I often visit my aunt or a friend of my mom's and
Culture can be described as a set of ideas along with a pattern of behaviors that are taught, learned and passed through generations of people. The culture of a society or group has its own non-genetic traits that govern how individuals interact with others and the environment. Just as genetic traits evolve so can a culture, a shift or change in the environment can prompt a transformation on many different levels (Park, p.33,406). For instance, when the Spanish introduced horses to Native Americans it set off a chain of cultural events that changed Native Americans culture drastically. Although Native American tribes language, customs, and traditions varied greatly they all shared very semitrailer hunting techniques, and the prized game during