Sun Dance

Sun Dance

The Sun Dance is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American and First Nations people, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe has its own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols. Many of the ceremonies have features in common, such as specific dances and songs passed down through many generations, the use of a traditional drum, praying with the pipe, offerings, fasting, and in some cases the ceremonial piercing of skin.

In 1997, responding to increasingly common desecration of the ceremony, the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Lakota asked non-Native people to stop attending the Sun Dance, or Wi-wanyang-wa-c'i-pi in Lakota. On March 8 and 9, 2003, some bundle keepers and traditional spiritual leaders from the Cheyenne, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota Nations met and issued a proclamation that non-Natives would be banned from sacred altars and the Seven Sacred Rites, including and especially the Sun Dance, effective March 9, 2003 onward.

Although not all Sun Dance ceremonies include dancers being ritually pierced, the object of the Sun Dance is to offer personal sacrifice as a prayer for the benefit of one's family and community.

Though only some Nations' Sun Dances include the piercings, the Canadian Government outlawed that feature of the Sun Dance in 1895. It is unclear about how often this law was enforced or how successfully, and, in at least one instance, police gave their permission for the ceremony to be conducted. Many ceremonies were simply done quietly and in secret. The Federal government of the United States government followed suit in 1904 with their own laws and enforcement. With better understanding of and respect for Indigenous traditions, both governments have ended their prohibitions. The full ceremony has been legal in Canada since 1951, and in the U.S. since passage of the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. The Sun Dance is practiced annually on many reserves and reservations in the US and Canada.