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The eagle dance is a ritual dance practiced by some American Indians. It is used by the Pueblos to ask for rain, and Iroquois use it to ask for peace and cure. It originated from the calumet dance and is performed by two to four men with artificial wings on their arms, producing movements that imitate eagles. [1]
Numerous indigenous groups such as Comanche, Iowa, Iroquois, and Midwestern Calumet performed eagle dances to call for divine intervention, because they are believed to carry messages to the Gods. [2] Nowadays, the eagle dance is popular among Native American powwows and it is associated with Tesuque and Jemez in New Mexico, and it is performed during spring. [2]
The eagle dance differs depending on the tribe, but it normally contains a depiction of an eagle's life cycle from birth to death. The dance shows how the eagle learns to walk and how it hunts to feed its family. [2] In the dance, a chorus of male dancers with bonnets provide singing and drumming accompaniment. Two dancers that represent the male and female eagle wear yellow paint on their lower legs, white paint on upper legs, and dark blue paint on their bodies. Short white feathers are fastened on their chests, which are painted yellow, and they have wig-like caps that have white feathers with a yellow beak. [2] Eagle feathers are attached to their arms, and dancers imitate the movements of eagles with flapping, turning, and swaying motions. [2]
Some indigenous North American cultures venerate eagles and associate them with the Great Spirit. Therefore, they became a symbol of strength, power, and wisdom. [2] Other tribes view eagles as symbolic of the sun. Their flight is compared to the daily passage of the sun across the sky. [2]
These are sacred for some Native Americans in the United States because they view it as a way of how their prayers are brought to heaven. [2]
Some Native Americans believe that wearing eagle feathers is a great honor. They give these to boys upon maturity. The handling of feathers is considered crucial during the Eagle Dance. The feathers should not touch the ground, and if a feather drops, the tribal elder is the only one allowed to pick it up. The dancer should then thank the elder with a gift. [2] Eagle feathers are used in ceremonial ornaments and objects, and plays a role in healing rituals. [2]
Nowadays, certain Native Americans may acquire their feathers by applying for a special permit in the government. Government agencies who find dead eagles provide it to the Native Americans that need them. [2]
Crow religion is the indigenous religion of the Crow people, Native Americans of the Great Plains area of the United States.
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas comprise numerous different cultures. Each has its own mythologies, many of which share certain themes across cultural boundaries. In North American mythologies, common themes include a close relation to nature and animals as well as belief in a Great Spirit that is conceived of in various ways. As anthropologists note, their great creation myths and sacred oral tradition in whole are comparable to the Christian Bible and scriptures of other major religions.
A powwow is a gathering with dances held by many Native American and First Nations communities. Powwows today are an opportunity for Indigenous people to socialize, dance, sing, and honor their cultures. Powwows may be private or public, indoors or outdoors. Dancing events can be competitive with monetary prizes. Powwows vary in length from single-day to weeklong events.
The Limbu (exonym) / Yakthung (endonym) or are a Sino-Tibetan ethnolinguistic group indigenous to the Himalayan region of eastern Nepal, Sikkim, Assam, Nagaland, northern West Bengal, and western Bhutan.
The stomp dance is performed by various Eastern Woodland tribes and Native American communities in the United States, including the Muscogee, Yuchi, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Delaware, Miami, Caddo, Tuscarora, Ottawa, Quapaw, Peoria, Shawnee, Seminole, Natchez, and Seneca-Cayuga tribes. Stomp dance communities are active in Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
Smudging, or other rites involving the burning of sacred herbs or resins, is a ceremony practiced by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While it bears some resemblance to other ceremonies and rituals involving smoke from other world cultures, notably those that use smoke for spiritual cleansing or blessing, the purposes and particulars of the ceremonies, and the substances used, can vary widely among tribes, bands, and nations, and even more so among different world cultures. In traditional communities, Elders maintain the protocols around these ceremonies and provide culturally specific guidance. The smudging ceremony, by various names, has been used by others outside of the Indigenous communities as part of New Age or commercial practices, which has also led to the over-harvesting of some of the plants used in ceremonies. Indigenous people in the US and Canada have argued against appropriation and over-harvesting of white sage.
Wooden Leg was a Northern Cheyenne warrior who fought against Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The Tagbanwa people are an indigenous peoples and one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Philippines, mainly found in central and northern Palawan. Research has shown that the Tagbanwa are possible descendants of the Tabon Man, thus making them one of the original inhabitants of the Philippines. They are a brown-skinned, slim, and straight-haired ethnic group.
The weapon dance employs weapons—or stylized versions of weapons—traditionally used in combat in order to simulate, recall, or reenact combat or the moves of combat in the form of dance, usually for some ceremonial purpose. Such dancing is quite common to folk ritual on many parts of the world. Weapon dancing is certainly ancient; among the earliest historical references we have are those that refer to the pyrrhichios, a weapon dance in ancient Sparta, in which the dance was used as a kind of ritual training for battle.
Thomas Yellowtail was a Medicine Man and Sun Dance chief of the Crow tribe for over thirty years prior to his death. Thomas Yellowtail's adult life was dedicated to the adherence to, and preservation of, the Sun Dance religion.
Fools Crow is a 1986 novel written by Native American author James Welch. Set in Montana shortly after the Civil War, this novel tells of White Man's Dog, a young Blackfeet Indian on the verge of manhood, and his band, known as the Lone Eaters. The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a portrait of a culture under pressure from colonization. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants.
Native American religions are the spiritual practices of the Native Americans in the United States and the Indigenous peoples in Canada. Ceremonial ways can vary widely and are based on the differing histories and beliefs of individual nations, tribes and bands. Early European explorers describe individual Native American tribes and even small bands as each having their own religious practices. Theology may be monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic, animistic, shamanistic, pantheistic or any combination thereof, among others. Traditional beliefs are usually passed down in the forms of oral histories, stories, allegories, and principles.
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the endonym Haudenosaunee are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America. They were known by the French during the colonial years as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy, while the English simply called them the "Five Nations". The peoples of the Iroquois included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, from which point it was known as the "Six Nations".
The Philippines is home to several folk dances such as Tinikling, Pandanggo, Cariñosa, and Subli. Dance has integrated itself in Philippine society over the course of many years and is imbedded in Philippine culture.
Native American Hoop Dance is one of the individual dances, and it is performed as a show dance in many tribes. It features a solo dancer dancing with a dozen or more hoops and using them to form a variety of both static and dynamic shapes. Most of the hoop dances in tribes across North America belong to modern hoop dance, which was invented in 1930.
A ceremonial pipe is a particular type of smoking pipe, used by a number of cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in their sacred ceremonies. Traditionally they are used to offer prayers in a religious ceremony, to make a ceremonial commitment, or to seal a covenant or treaty. The pipe ceremony may be a component of a larger ceremony, or held as a sacred ceremony in and of itself. Indigenous peoples of the Americas who use ceremonial pipes have names for them in each culture's Indigenous language. Not all cultures have pipe traditions, and there is no single word for all ceremonial pipes across the hundreds of diverse Native American languages.
Mexican mask-folk art refers to the making and use of masks for various traditional dances and ceremony in Mexico. Evidence of mask making in the region extends for thousands of years and was a well-established part of ritual life in the pre-Hispanic territories that are now Mexico well before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire occurred. In the early colonial period, evangelists took advantage of native customs of dance and mask to teach the Catholic faith although later, colonial authorities tried to ban both unsuccessfully. After Mexican Independence, mask and dance traditions showed a syncretism and mask traditions have continued to evolve into new forms, depicting Mexico's history and newer forms of popular culture such as lucha libre. Most traditional masks are made of wood, while some are made from leather, wax, cardboard, papier-mâché or other materials. Masks commonly depict Europeans, Afro-Mexicans, old men and women, animals, and the fantastic or the supernatural, especially demons or the devil.
Folk dance of Mexico, commonly known as baile folklorico or Mexican ballet folk dance, is a term used to collectively describe traditional Mexican folk dances. Ballet folklórico is not just one type of dance; it encompasses each region's traditional dance that has been influenced by their local folklore and has been entwined with ballet characteristics to be made into a theatrical production. Each dance represents a different region in Mexico illustrated through their different zapateado, footwork, having differing stomps or heel toe points, and choreography that imitates animals from their region such as horses, iguanas, and vultures.
The Saaroa or Hla'alua people are an indigenous people of central southern Taiwan. They live in the two villages of Taoyuan and Kaochung in Taoyuan District, Kaohsiung and Maya Village in Namasia District, Kaohsiung.
The Thangkaali (Danggali) are an indigenous Australian people of the state of South Australia.