Children and Childhood in American Religions

Chapter 7: Native American Children and Religion

119 7 Native American Children and Religion ROGER IRON CLOUD AND R AYMOND BUCKO The place of children within the Native American religions presents a unique situation historically and culturally. There was and is no single Native American religion just as there is no single Native American culture , or a single way in which Native children are considered across a wide span of religious practices. Today there are 561 federally recognized tribes, while other groups continue to seek recognition.1 At the time of European contact, according to estimates, the number of Natives in North America was between 1.3 million and 10 million people.2 The 2000 census places the number of Native people who self-identify as solely Native American at 2. million (1 percent of the total population), with .3 million more who selfidentify as “Native American and other” (1.5 percent of the population).3 A third of the Native population is under eighteen years of age. More than half of all Native Americans live away from reservations.5 Despite the wide variety of Native American cultures, languages, political structures, and belief systems, Native North Americans share a set of post-European-contact ordeals that bind them together: The common theme that all Native American cultures share is the postcontact decimation of peoples, the destruction of native life-styles and languages, and the subordination of aboriginal peoples in what has been called a “civilizing” process toward a superimposed “superior” mode of life. The subjection to a dominant, White, racist society is the common experience for Native Americans in the present day.6 120 ROGER IRON CLOUD A ND R AYMOND BUCKO Government and churches both used schools in their efforts to assimilate Natives into the mainstream culture, and this policy placed Native children at the center of a concerted institutional effort to “civilize” the Indians. In the nineteenth-century paradigm of cultural evolutionism, Indians as a group were placed at the lowest (or “savage”) rung of culture. They were seen more as children than as adults and therefore needed guardians to make proper decisions for them. As Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan said in 1891, education would accelerate the cultural evolutionary process: “A good school may thus bridge over for them the dreary chasm of a thousand years of tedious evolution.”7 In accordance with these notions, the American school system was used to separate Native children from their cultural and religious practices in order to inculcate “civilized” habits of thought and behavior. Any attempt at a broad overview of the position of children in all American Indian religious traditions would result in either gigantism or banality, so we focus on the Oglala Lakota of western South Dakota. Roger Iron Cloud is himself an Oglala; his work is informed by his own childhood experiences and by professional expertise in early childhood development. He has worked with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and in Washington, DC, Raymond Bucko is Roger’s Hunka (brother by Lakota adoption); he is a Jesuit priest and anthropologist who has worked with the Lakota people since 1976. In this chapter, we have sought to honor a variety of voices among the Oglala, past and present, on the topic of the position of children in Lakota religion. Roger has had many conversations with his own relatives and friends. While they have graciously allowed their voices to be heard for this work, we choose to protect their anonymity and are grateful for their generosity. The Lakota People The Oglala Lakota are one of seven bands of the western or Teton division of the Sioux. They refer to themselves as the Lakota, while Sioux is the name used today to encompass both the western Lakota and eastern Dakota peoples. The Pine Ridge Reservation is the National territory of the Oglala Lakota. The 2000 census estimates the reservation population of Native people at about fourteen thousand, although some claim that it is as high as twenty-four thousand. Significant populations of Oglalas and other Lakota are found in towns neighboring the reservation as well as in major American cities and throughout the world. Lakota Belief/Metaphysics A contemporary voice explains the core of Lakota belief in this way: NAT I V E A MER IC A N CHILDR EN 121 The Lakota believe there is a strong bond between Wakan Tanka or God, with the natural world consisting of...