What is Lakota tradition?
Lakota tradition is the spiritual way of the Lakota, the seven western groups of the Sioux peoples, also called the Teton or western Sioux. Scholars often call it Lakota religion; many Lakota call it a way of life. At its centre is wakȟáŋ, a sacred power that runs through the whole universe. The unity of all wakȟáŋ is Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka, usually translated the Great Mystery or Great Spirit, regarded as the source of all things.
Lakota tradition vs adjacent concepts
Lakota tradition is often folded into vague labels, and the differences matter. It is not 'Native American spirituality' in general, because there is no single Native religion. Each people has its own. The Lakota way is specific to the Lakota and their close Sioux relatives, with its own language, rites and holy figures. It overlaps with shamanism as anthropologists use that word, since both work with spirits, healing and trance. But shamanism is an outside comparison, not a term the Lakota use for themselves; their healers are called holy men, not shamans. And the sweat lodges and smudging now sold at wellness retreats are loose borrowings. They are not the Lakota rites, which sit inside a whole web of language, kinship and ceremony.
Wakȟáŋ and Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka
The core idea is wakȟáŋ, often rendered 'sacred' or 'holy'. It is the power present in everything that exists. Because people share in it, the tradition treats all living things as relatives, a kinship usually translated as 'all my relations'. The world is also home to many wakȟáŋ beings, the wakȟáŋpi, who can help or harm. People address them with prayer and offerings, usually tobacco or small cloth flags, and above all through the sacred pipe, the čhaŋnúŋpa. Smoking the pipe is itself a prayer. Mysticism elsewhere reaches for a similar great mystery beyond all names; here the name is Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka, and the reaching is done through ceremony rather than doctrine.
The seven sacred rites
The tradition tells that its rites were given by White Buffalo Calf Woman, a benevolent spirit who came to the people long ago and brought the sacred pipe. Seven rites are counted. They include the inípi, the sweat-lodge purification; the vision quest, in which a person seeks guidance alone in the wild; and the sun dance, the great summer ceremony in which dancers make offerings of their own flesh for the good of the people. A trained specialist, the wičháša wakȟáŋ or holy man, leads healing and ceremony. The best known is the yuwípi man, whose night-time yuwípi rite calls on spirits to heal. The seven rites were written down in 1953 in The Sacred Pipe, the holy man Black Elk's account recorded by Joseph Epes Brown.
Suppression and revival
By the nineteenth century the Lakota had formed into seven groups on the northern plains. In the 1860s and 1870s the United States moved most of them onto the Great Sioux Reservation and pressed them to become Christian. Many did, though many also kept the old ways in private. The government tried to stamp out the ceremonies and banned the sun dance in 1883. The rites survived, partly because practitioners like Black Elk allowed them to be recorded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1960s, encouraged by the American Indian Movement, a revival brought the ceremonies back into the open. By the late twentieth century Lakota practice was shaping Native religious life across North America.
Why the word 'religion' is contested
There is honest disagreement about what to call this. Many Lakota resist the word 'religion'. They see it as a Christian missionary category that splits life into the sacred and the ordinary, where their tradition treats the whole of life as sacred. 'Way of life' or 'spirituality' is often preferred. A second dispute is about ownership. As outsiders took up sweat lodges, vision quests and pipe ceremonies, Lakota representatives objected. In 1993 a gathering of Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people issued a declaration against the commercial use of their ceremonies. The lexicon notes these disputes without settling them. How the tradition should be named, and who may practise it, are questions for the Lakota.