For non-natives or tourists it’s a shock often mentioned when visiting aboriginal communities, that ancestral practices are not seen either on the spiritual level or in terms of clothing or food practices.
What we must understand, is the enormous upheavals that the Europeans imposed in the identity and spiritual culture of the Native American Nations. The belief at the time of the Europeans was that they set had foot in a « terra nullius » a land without a master.
The newcomers began to plant flags to demonstrate their ownership of American territory but also the clergy of several religious congregations came with the mission to « convert the savages ». Was considered pagan and sin all spiritual movements other than those permitted by the Church whether the use of traditional incense offerings, the sacred drums, rites of passage, sweat lodges, shaking tent ceremony or the fact of not being married according to Christian church rites.
Whence the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was to provide First Nations peace, friendship, respect, approximate equality and protection, this promise proved in fact more a step towards domination. The Constitution Act in 1867, granted the Canadian federal parliament legislative authority over “Indians and lands reserved for them.” The first Indian Act, adopted in 1876, reflected the government’s emphasis on land management, belonging to First Nations, locally and its ultimate objective, the administration and assimilation of Aboriginals into European Canada.
In 1849 came the first boarding schools, which would instigate a widespread child abduction network, removing from their families for 10 months out of the year and widely mistreating native children. This was endorsed by the federal government and the Christian churches in order make them “western and civilized”. This came with the formal widespread ban on performing ceremonies like the sun dance (1885), potlatch (1884) (ceremony based on the exchange of objects between the members of a community), or possessing any spiritually related object like drums, sacred pipes, medicine bags, or rattles. Native American spiritual practices were thus rendered illegal.
It was not until 1951 that the ban on ceremonies and spiritual practices was lifted. However, traces of these prohibitions and the suffering and cultural genocide experienced in residential schools are still very present in native communities across America. Native communities are doing great efforts in leading their members to healing and various teachings are provided for revive health principles and the balanced way of life that was traditionnally transmitted when using the medicine wheel.
