The classes I have taken at the local community college have been a real eye-opener. I have now been introduced to a side of history that was never taught to me while passing through 12 years of public school. One surprise was learning that history is inherently subjective and prejudiced by the worldview of those who wrote it. I’m not sure why I had never grasped that concept before. This was true, especially for the indigenous of North America.
Early Native history was not written by Natives. Instead, it was written primarily by pioneer adventurers searching for land and gold or by missionaries with an agenda to save the “heathens.” It wasn’t until the early 1800s that Sequoyah, a Tuskegee Cherokee, developed the first Native American syllabary, enabling both reading and writing in the Cherokee language. This absence of a written history has contributed to the cultural drift many Native tribes experience today.
Preliterate cultures, like those of North Americans in the late 15th century, had storytellers (Sioux: Oya’te Woya’ka), men and women who preserved their culture and traditions through song, pictures and stories. These storytellers acted as databases for their tribes, living repositories of traditions and beliefs. Storytellers usually transmitted tribal knowledge at seasonal gatherings. When differences occurred between these elders, they would come together and discuss, sing or act out what they remembered until a consensus of facts settled the matter (I have personally seen this process while living among a primitive people group). Anthropologists have affirmed this oral tradition.
If these gatherings were under the governance of a colonial power, they were often forbidden because of ignorance, fear or religious prejudices, resulting in a loss or distortion (or both) of traditions and history.
Many Native nations today are searching for a renaissance of culture but have to “reinvent” their unique traditions based on existing history and the few photographs available. Fueling this movement for the Sioux is a fascinating prophecy made by the Lakota war chief Crazy Horse around 1810. Here is a partial quote:
“[T]he Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.”
We are in that seventh generation today, and there are groups of Lakota, Nakota and Dakota Sioux from Pine Ridge to Poplar engaged in rediscovering their traditions and ceremonies to honor Wakan Tanka (the Great Unknown or Great Spirit), praying for their people and the day when “All the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life.”
Please pray that our Native neighbors find that sacred path to the Tree of Life. Pray that the Creator reveals His Son Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life to His Native nations and that we (all of us) can have a part in their journey.
Thank you for your prayers and continued support.
