Yuwipi, Vision and Experience in Oglala RitualA profoundly spiritual book, Yuwipi describes a present-day Oglala Sioux healing ritual that is performed for a wide range of personal crises. The vivid narrative centers on the experience of a hypothetical father and son in need of spiritual and physical assistance. The author combines the Yuwipi ceremony with two ancient Sioux rituals often performed in conjunction with it, the vision quest and the sweat lodge. Wayne Runs Again, suffering from alcoholism and worried about his father's health, seeks out a shaman who, while bound in darkness, calls on supernatural beings to free him and to communicate. While the young man undergoes purification in a sweat lodge and waits on a hill for a vision, the community prays for him and his father. The ceremony serves not only to cure the sick but also to reaffirm the continuity of Oglala society. |
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adepts animals attendance Basil bowl Bull Durham called cigarette cloth Crazy Horse cult curing darkness dog meat doorway earth ethnography evil face father Feraca flag offerings flaps flesh Friend gain knowledge hand hanhepi hear Heyoka hocoka hole Horn Chips Horn Cloud Indian Inktomi instructed known a voice Lakota Lip's live Loves War medicine Mitak night oyas'in patient Pine Ridge Reservation Plenty Wolf began Plenty Wolf took pray to Wakantanka prayers rattles Red Cloud road rolled sacred hill sacred persons sacred pipe sacred stones send a voice sick šicun sing singers Slim Buttes smoked someone song Spider spirits Spotted Eagle star quilt string of tobacco suitcase sun dance sweat lodge talk things Thunder-Beings tobacco offerings told traditional Tunkašila Wakantanka vision quest walk Wanblee Wayne white man's willow Wolf's Yellow Boy Yuwipi meeting Yuwipi men