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Each year during the moon when the cherries ripen (in
August) the Oglala Sioux supplicate to their Great Spirit in a
religious ceremony called the Sun Dance. The ceremony, once
banned by the government because of its "unusual cruelty,"
takes place in a circular area located on the outskirts of Pine
Ridge, S.D.
Toward the end of the ceremony, after many offerings of
peace pipes to the sun, participants attach ropes tied to the
top of an aspen in the center of the arena to small pieces of
wood skewered under the skin of their breasts. The dancers
then run away from the tree as hard as they can until the
skewers are torn loose and the skin is broken.
The ceremony is a very exhausting one involving four days
of fasting and praying culminating with the piercing. These
days the affair is not as rigorous as it once was due to
government intervention when one ceremony resulted in the
death of one of the dancers some years back. Reasons for
participation are varied-some come to give thanks for good
fortune, others to ask for help in solving problems of illness
and still others simply to show faith in the Great Spirit and in
Indian ways.
The presentation of these photographs is in no way a claim
to impart the essence of the Sun Dance. That is impossible and
only can be understood by the experience of being there and
being Indian. They are, instead, only meager images of a scant
few of the observers and participants in a very beautiful and
very religious ce Qmony. They are only a little bit of captured
light taken from that particular time and place, a small
reflection of life on the prairie.
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Photos and story by Dan Ladely
thursday, October 5, 1972
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