Cosmology and Moral Community in the Lakota Sun Dance

Reconceptualizing J. R. Walker's Account

Fritz Detwiler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000536263
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, this book uses a close analysis of James R. Walker's 1917 monograph on the Lakota Sun Dance to explore how the Sun Dance communal ritual complex – the most important Lakota ceremony – creates moral community, providing insights into the cosmology and worldview of Lakota tradition.

The book uses Walker's primary source to conduct a reading of the Sun Dance in its nineteenth-century context through the lenses of Lakota metaphysics, cosmology, ontology, and ethics. The author argues that the Sun Dance constitutes a cosmic ethical drama in which persons of all types – human and nonhuman – come together in reciprocal actions and relationships. Drawing on contemporary animist theory and a perspectivist approach that uses Lakota worldview assumptions as the basis for analysis, the book enables a richer understanding of the Sun Dance and its role in the Lakota moral world.

Offering a nuanced understanding that centers Lakota views of the sacred, this book will be relevant to scholars of religion and animism, and all those interested in Native American cultures and lifeways.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Introduction
• 1 The Lakota
• 2 Čhaŋgléška Wakȟáŋ: the Lakota world
• 3 Candidacy part 1: individual and communal responsibilities
• 4 Candidacy part 2: the journey to the Sun Dance site
• 5 The Preliminary Camp
• 6 The Ceremonial Camp, days one and two
• 7 The Ceremonial Camp, days three and four
• 8 Concluding thoughts
• Appendix A: phonetic guide
• Appendix B: glossary
• Index