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What Is The Cherokee Ritual Of A Changing Girl Into Womanhood

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Changing Woman: A powerful goddess that represents creation and protection in the Apache community who gives the gift of fertility and reproduction. One of the many ceremonies the Apache people carry out is the initiation of a girl into womanhood. It takes place the summer after the girls first menstrual period. This is a four day ceremony where the girl and her extended family have prepared all year spiritually and by saving resources. The ceremony not only transforms the girl, but blesses her with a long and healthy life. The ceremony is not only for her, but the community as a whole. The Apache ceremony for transitioning to womanhood is effective in acknowledging the passage of a girl to womanhood.

The Apache Sunrise …show more content…

She is the one who has these rules placed onto her as it will help strengthen and test her character into becoming a woman as she performs in this ceremony for her community. The dusting of pollen further helps isolate the girl to help her transformation into womanhood. What some might consider as a challenge to this part of the rite is that this event is highly spiritual to the girl and is fully a community event. So in that aspect it is not very isolated. All members of the community are invited and fed by the girl's family throughout the ceremony. As stated by “Apache Women’s Initiation and Divine Renewal”, the passage of the girl to womanhood is sacred through ritual transformation that casts blessings on the entire community. Which continues to challenge the idea of it being an isolated rite to the girl. But all of the rituals within the ceremony are isolating to the girl …show more content…

Infant, child, adolescent, and woman. The girl is leaving who she was as a child and is now emerging into the world as a woman. This represents the transformation stage well as it has already reached the isolation stage and some sort of ritual is being done in order for the girl to experience a change. In this case, leaving her childhood to emerge as a woman and take on new responsibilities.

As the ceremony concludes, the community gathers to share traditional food, receive her blessing of cattail pollen which is seen to have the healing power of Changing Woman, and they tell stories and share wisdom (Apache Women’s Initiation and Divine Renewal). The girl has now become a woman and in turn, the deity has taken the girl's youth to live onto the next ceremony. The reentry point is taken in this stage as the girl is now transformed into a woman and is coming back into the world different than who she was at the beginning of the ceremony. She has left her youth and the ritual is

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I even bit one of the women as she held me down. ”(Kamara,89) imagine being a nine-year-old and reading this. Two things would go through your head. “What is happening here” and “can this happen to me” children would have no idea what is going on and would be scared to think that someone, including their family members, might do it to me. Remember that it says that Marie, one of Mariatu’s guardians is helping out with the ceremony.

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