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Sun Dance (Part 1)

Cree Sun Dance (2013)

The Sun Dance Ceremony

Lakota Sun Dance Piercing Song

Sun Dance Thunderspirit Heyoka Song

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Lakota Sacred Pipe Keeper

Blackfoot Sun Dance Ceremony (1954)

The Sun Dance ceremony had its greatest flowering during the Equestrian Period, when the acquisition of the horse stimulated various groups to penetrate into the Plains region devoting themselves to the buffalo hunt, between the late XVIII century and the 1880. The ceremony was held usually once a year, during the summer season, when the abundance of pasture allowed the gathering of the diverse bands or nomadic groups in places arranged beforehand for the celebration. Each group determined the precise time of the performance according to a variety of natural and astronomical markers. The ritual had the purpose of promoting and renewing the life force of nature and of society, guaranteeing the survival of the community, reinforcing the links between the component groups, fulfilling the vows of some individuals and consenting them to show their courage and willingness to sacrifice themselves on behalf of the community  (Hultkrantz 1973: 9-18). Usually, the ceremonial period comprised four days of preparation and four days of ritual activities: the number four, a sacred number for the Plains peoples, constantly recurs in the sequences of the ritual.
The Sun Dance included some diffused and recurrent elements: a preliminary purification through the sweat bath (sweat lodge), the preparation of the dancers and their training by special instructors, the building of the dance lodge, with the raising of a pole in the centre specifically chosen and ceremonially brought, the abstinence from food and water during the duration of the ceremony and the rhythmic dance around the central pole. Many other details however varied widely from one group to the other: only some groups, for example, practiced forms of self-sacrifice, including the suspension of the dancers from the central pole with pegs which perforated the flesh of the chest and of the back, while the employment of body paintings, ceremonial objects, altars, effigies, sacred bundles, show an extraordinary heterogeneity.
The whole ceremonial system of the Sun Dance revolves around two main themes: the acquisition of power by single individuals, through suffering and the vision experience, and the renewing of nature and of the social complex. Both can be brought back to shamanistic practices widely shared among the hunter-gatherers of the Americas, whose origin dates back probably to the most distant past, when the first prehistoric hunters came across from Asia to settle in the new continent (Comba 2012).