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A white buffalo or white bison is an American bison possessing white fur, and is considered sacred or spiritually significant in several Native American religions; therefore, such buffalo are often visited for prayer and other religious rituals. The coats of buffalo are almost always brown and their skin a dark brown or black; however, white buffalo can result from one of several physical conditions:
The white buffalo is a sacred sign in Lakota and other Plains Indians religions. Chief Arvol Looking Horse is the current keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe.
The story of the pipe is that,
"Nineteen generations ago the beautiful spirit we now refer to as White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the Sacred C’anupa (Sacred Pipe) to our People. She taught the People the Seven Sacred Rites and how to walk on Mother Earth in a sacred manner. Pte-san win-yan. As she left, she turned into a young beautiful white buffalo and then she walked over the hill and out of sight. This is where she received her name, White Buffalo Calf Woman. She gifted us with the Seven Sacred Rites that still sustain our People today. The person who smokes the sacred pipe achieves union with all Beings. By smoking this C’anupa, you will make direct personal contact with the Great Mystery. . . Following the Way of this Sacred C’anupa, you will walk in a sacred way upon the earth, for the Earth is your grandmother and your mother and she is sacred. . .″
— Chief Arvol Looking Horse
The story is also a prophecy. White Buffalo Calf Woman told the people that she would return in the form of a white buffalo calf and that it would be both a blessing and a warning. When the white animal shows its sacred color there will be great changes upon the earth. The births in the early 1990s and 2000s of white buffalo calves were seen by indigenous Americans to be worrying portents. Arvol and many others interpret those changes to mean the current ecological crises taking place. If humanity continues to live without harmony with the earth it will be cursed, but if spiritual unity and harmony with the earth is achieved humanity will be blessed. [2] [3]
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o and the Tsétsėhéstȧhese ; the tribes merged in the early 19th century. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, and the Northern Cheyenne, who are enrolled in the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. The Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family.
Badlands National Park is a national park of the United States in southwestern South Dakota. The park protects 242,756 acres of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles, along with the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The National Park Service manages the park, with the South Unit being co-managed with the Oglala Lakota tribe.
Heȟáka Sápa [h xaka,sapa] commonly known as Black Elk, was a wičháša wakȟáŋ and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota people. He was a second cousin of the war leader Crazy Horse and fought with him in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He survived the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. He toured and performed in Europe as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
White Buffalo Calf Woman or White Buffalo Maiden is a sacred woman of supernatural origin, central to the Lakota religion as the primary cultural prophet. Oral traditions relate that she brought the "Seven Sacred Rites" to the Lakota people.
Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by White American settlers on Native American territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. His participation in several famous battles of the Black Hills War on the northern Great Plains, among them the Fetterman Fight in 1866, in which he acted as a decoy, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which he led a war party to victory, earned him great respect from both his enemies and his own people.
Mahpiya Ska or White Cloud was an albino female buffalo primarily residing at the National Buffalo Museum located in Jamestown, North Dakota. She was on loan to the museum and the project caring for her was funded by the City of Jamestown for approximately $10,000 per year. She was certified a true Albino American Bison. She died November 14, 2016, at her birthplace herd that she had been returned to, Shirek Buffalo Ranch.
Chanunpa is the Lakota language name for the sacred, ceremonial pipe and the ceremony in which it is used. The pipe ceremony is one of the Seven Sacred Rites of the Lakota people. Lakota tradition has it that White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the chanunpa to the people, as one of the Seven Sacred Rites, to serve as a sacred bridge between this world and Wakan Tanka, the "Great Mystery".
The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation was created by the United States in 1889 by breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation, following the attrition of the Lakota in a series of wars in the 1870s. The reservation covers almost all of Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota. In addition, many small parcels of off-reservation trust land are located in Stanley, Haakon, and Meade counties.
The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the United States.
The Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo is a zoo located in Tupelo, Mississippi. At 210 acres (0.85 km2), the zoo is the largest zoo in the state of Mississippi.
Čhetáŋ Sápa(Black Hawk) [tʃʰɛtə̃ sapa] (c. 1832 – c. 1890) was a medicine man and member of the Sans Arc or Itázipčho band of the Lakota people. He is most known for a series of 76 drawings that were later bound into a ledger book that depicts scenes of Lakota life and rituals. The ledger drawings were commissioned by William Edward Canton, a federal "Indian trader" at the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Black Hawk's drawings were drawn between 1880-1881. Today they are known as one of the most complete visual records of Lakota cosmology, ritual and daily life.
Kenahkihinén was a male white buffalo born at The Woodland Zoo & More in Farmington, Pennsylvania, and now residing at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington. Born under extremely unusual circumstances, he is unlike any other white buffalo born previously. He is neither leucistic, albino or a beefalo; he is pure buffalo. As with other rare white buffalo born in North America, he is considered by many Native Americans to be a sacred animal.
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve is a Native American author, with a focus on children's books about Native Americans.
Zintkála Nuni, alternatively 'Zintka Lanuni', was a Lakota Sioux woman who was a 4-month-old infant when she was found alive among the victims at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Wocekiye is a Lakota language term meaning "to call on for aid," "to pray," and "to claim relationship with". It refers to a practice among Lakota and Dakota people engaged in both the traditional Lakota religion as well as forms of Christianity.
Arvol Looking Horse is a Lakota Native American spiritual leader. He is the 19th keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and Bundle.
Lakota religion or Lakota spirituality is the traditional Native American religion of the Lakota people. It is practiced primarily in the North American Great Plains, within Lakota communities on reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota. The tradition has no formal leadership or organizational structure and displays much internal variation.
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