Native American Ceremonies And Rituals Essay

A person’s culture is their way of life. From a young age, we learn to act within the norms of our culture and to be truly ethnocentric. What if one day someone came into your life and told you everything you were doing your entire life was wrong and stupid? Brian Moore’s Black Robe, tells the story of Laforgue, a Jesuit priest from 17th Century Québec who travels to an unfamiliar land called New France. Laforgue’s goal is to convert Algonquin Native Americans into God fearing Christians. Laforgue faces many cultural misunderstandings with the Natives along his journey; he finds the most difficulties understanding the native’s concept of death, why they value dreams, and overcoming ethnocentrism.

While some of the cultural norms and expectations varied slightly amongst the members of the Sioux, Navajo, and Cherokee tribes, it seems as though the cultural communicative behaviors and/or many of the norms and expectations were overall exceedingly similar across these three tribes.

Another rich source of misunderstanding between Native Americans and modern society’s cultural analysis is the different attitude of most Native Americans to such concepts as Nature, the environment, and social values,

Ranging from the south Alleghenies mountain range all the way down to the south of Georgia and far west of Alabama, lived the Cherokee Indians. They were a powerful detached tribe of the Iroquoian family and were commonly called Tsaragi which translates into "cave people." This tribe was very prominent in what is now called the U.S, but over time has been split up or run out of their land because of social or political encounters with the new settlers from Europe. Despite the dispersion or the split amongst this tribe, they still obtained their core religious beliefs, practices and ceremonies. Their detailed belief system, fundamental beliefs, significant meanings, and their connection to song and dance make up their religious system. The early

Native American values are seldom practiced in today’s day and age. Respect still hangs on by a thread that is gradually disintegrating over time. It is held crucial by multitudinous amounts of people today, but it is not practiced enough satisfactorily . All Native American values are important, but this one still holds today

Native Americans have a really diverse culture and one report is not enough to talk about all of their cultures. They have fourteen tribes so it is obvious that they will have a lot of different cultures and traditions between all fourteen tribes. It is impossible to have fourteen tribes with different people and expect them to all believe in the same things so some of them have different beliefs and different traditions. They worshipped a lot of gods and even some of the gods had dolls made for them. Some tribes worshipped the sun or fire or some serpents. Buckle your seatbelts boys and girls because today the topic is going to be about those three things.

Storytelling is an fundamental tradition in Native American culture, acting as a communal activity and a method of bonding. The importance of storytelling is communicated in an interview with Ceremony author, Leslie Marmon Silko. “It's very important to understand the function that this kind of telling and retelling of incidents has. It's what holds the community together in a way that goes beyond clan relations and blood relations” (Source B). Silko expresses that stories connect a group of people in a way that relationships and

Although Native Americans are characterized as both civilized and uncivilized in module one readings, their lifestyles and culture are observed to be civilized more often than not. The separate and distinct duties of men and women (Sigard, 1632) reveal a society that has defined roles and expectations based on gender. There are customs related to courtship (Le Clercq, 1691) that are similar to European cultures. Marriage was a recognized union amongst Native Americans, although not necessarily viewed as a serious, lifelong commitment like the Europeans (Heckewelder, 1819).

Today’s society consist of a variety of different cultures. Each cultures has their own identity, customs, and beliefs. In my community we have several strong, family oriented cultures. The two that were chosen was the Hispanics community and the Haliwa-Saponi Native American community. It was very interesting to see that while this communities are different they share some strong similarities, such as family ties.

Sacred places can be considered sacred for a few reasons. Whether a god inhabits the site, maybe the god created the place, or may just have paid the site a visit. Sacred sites can also gain a spiritual connection from a historic religious person such as Muhammed or Jesus Christ. Birth and death places of saints and prophets are also considered sacred. These sites can also be places where relics are found such as a splinter from the cross or a bone from an apostle. These sites also gain notoriety in a scared sense if visit by an apparition (Super,50). One thing that is for certain is that the sacred must present itself to a person.

They exchanged many things, such as physical items and information, and cultural exchanges. These exchanges were everywhere, and there is no specific event or person involved. These contributions include the areas of agriculture, food, language, and also government.

During this time period, Native Americans were being treated so poorly. They were very misunderstood, and white men didn 't even try to understand them. All they cared about was forcing the Indians off of "their" land. This is unfair in so many ways. One being that the Natives were actually there first. An example of their mistreatment would be the "Ghost Dance". This was a dancing ritual that promised the Indians a new world "free from whites", where they could truly be free. However, this innoccent dance was very wronly interpreted. The white men thought that it was a war threat. So, they hunted down the Indian man who created it, and killed him. This sparked up something deep inside the Native Americans, and a battle was started at Wounded

To explore levels of media use and beliefs about representation, ethnographic interviews were conducted with Native American students enrolled at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande. Qualative methods were used to analyze the data collected. This was utilized through direct observation, communication with participants, analysis of texts, and following an ethnographic study. Ethnographic studies or ethnographic designs are “qualitative research procedures for describing, analyzing, and interpreting a cultural group 's shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time” (Hart, 2006). To achieve this, interviews were done with ten native students at Eastern Oregon University. I chose ten students because there

Oral tradition in Native American culture illustrates the physical history of each tribe, connects origins of the natural world to a contemporary setting, and reinforces generations of societal values. In particular, the Nez Perce tale, “Red Willow,” encapsulates and preserves many elements of tradition within its narrative. Spirituality, death rituals, social roles, and analysis of their people’s surrounding environment are all essential themes compacted into the brief narrative. The story’s pacing is rapid and simple in order to entrance and educate a young audience while reinforcing the tribe’s traditions and introducing creation tales. Origin stories structured similarly to “Red Willow” have been used throughout Native American cultures

In North American culture, weddings are usually a lavish celebration of joining two families. Recently, at a wedding I attended with my family, I noticed many things about the role of music in the wedding ceremony. Usually weddings are composed of a ceremony, with a reception or celebration afterwards. In this wedding, there was a limited role of music in the actual ceremony (other than the bridal procession/ “Here Comes the Bride” and when the newlyweds exited at the end of the wedding), however the role of music was more substantial in the wedding reception (in which there was celebratory music and dancing).