The sun dance ceremony is a very prominent, multi-day ceremony practiced by many Native American tribes, especially the Plains Indians tribes. Though many Plains Indian tribes practice the sun dance ceremony, the ceremony plays a very prominent role in the Lakota, or Oglala Sioux, tribe. The sun dance ceremony was done every summer by the Lakota tribe until the American government had banned the ceremony. In the Lakota tribe, the sun dance ceremony included erecting a sacred lodge and a central pole, and the participants would have their backs pierced by a rope and is connected to the central pole. The participants start to circle the central pole have been attached to it by the rope, while staring at the sun with the hopes of freeing themselves …show more content…
One of the central reasons that the pole affects the Lakota’s perception of the world is through the symbolism of the dead relatives of the Lakota. As mentioned by DeMallie, “A speech by Short Bull to his people… points out the importance of the tree or center pole as defining the sacred space…: ‘Now, there will be a tree sprout up, and there all the members of our religion and the tribe must gather together. That will be the place where we will see our dead relations,’” (DeMallie, 398). In a similar manner, as both the ceremonial pipe and use of animals, the cottonwood tree has also come to evoke this separation. Considering that the Lakota members can see their dead relatives through the cotton-wood tree, it has come to indicate that death is not permanent in the sense that deceased presence is completely eliminated from the living world after death. Furthermore, by having the deceased being seen also shows that that the outline of each realm is permeable and not completely solid. Similarly, the ropes that are attached to the cottonwood tree also help the Lakota understand the world. As stated by Lincoln, “Numerous ropes are tied on it (one for each dancer), … four of these colors-red, yellow, white, and black- are explicitly correlated to the four cardinal directions and to other quadripartite sets, which include the four human races,” (Lincoln, 5). From this, the Lakota tribe members see every aspect of the world is divided into four parts, that cannot be divided while also being expected to function properly. The belief that the spheres being conjoined is also exemplified by Lincoln, who states that, “At each of the four directions, flags of the appropriate color are set, and the two other colors-blue and green-are associated with the heavens above and the earth below, cosmic spheres that are conjoined through the