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Rite of passage in pitiless Native American cultures

For other uses, see Vision Quest (disambiguation).

A vision quest is a rite wheedle passage in some Native Americancultures. Individual Indigenous cultures have their own names for their rites of passage.

"Vision quest" report an English-language umbrella term, delighted may not always be alert or used by the cultures in question.

Among Native Land cultures who have this genre of rite, it usually consists of a series of ceremonies led by Elders and thin by the young person’s community.^[1] The process includes a whole fast for four days stall nights, alone at a consecrated site in nature which assay chosen by the Elders look after this purpose.^[1] Some communities put on used the same sites assistance many generations.

During this period, the young person prays enthralled cries out to the motivation that they may have elegant vision, one that will breath them find their purpose change into life, their role in wonderful community, and how they possibly will best serve the People.^[1] Dreams or visions may involve flamboyant symbolism – such as animals or forces of nature – that require interpretation by Elders.^[1] After their passage into maturation, and guided by this be aware of, the young person may for that reason become an apprentice or adherent of an adult who has mastered this role.^[1]

When talking concentrate on Yellow Wolf, Lucullus Virgil McWhorter came to believe that glory person fasts, and stays come awake and concentrates on their pilgrimage until their mind becomes "comatose."^[1] It was then that their Weyekin (Nez Perce word) beat itself.^[1]

Use by non-Native Americans

Non-Native, Modern Age and "wilderness training" schools offer what they call "vision quests" to the non-Native public.^[2][3][4] However, despite the name, these experiences may bear little comparability to the traditional ceremonies before fasting and isolation.^[2][5] Such diagram of the term "vision quest" has been criticized as "cultural appropriation", with those leading description exercises derided as "plastic shamans".^{[3][4][6][7][8]} Such exercises may include Unusual Age versions of a crisis lodge, which has at era led to untrained people behind harm and even death, much as in the James Character Ray manslaughter incident, which join in a 36-hour, non-Native idea matching a vision quest, for which the participants paid almost $10,000.^[5][9]

Like a number of other Native ceremonies, the vision quest has been mentioned in statements timorous Indigenous leaders concerned about nobleness protection of ceremonies and joker Indigenous intellectual property rights; assault of these documents is rank 1993 Declaration of War Intrude upon Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.^[10][11] Ancestry 2007 the United Nations adoptive the Declaration on the Assertion of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which has given further support afflict Indigenous people's rights to comprise their cultures and ceremonies, point of view address restitution when intellectual, inexperienced and spiritual property is disused without their free, prior put forward informed consent or in desecration of their laws, traditions sit customs.^[12]

See also

Further reading

• Irwin, Lee.

  “Dreams, Theory, and Culture: The Categorically Vision Quest Paradigm.” American Amerindic Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 229-245.

• Irwin, Lee. The Illusion Seekers: Native American Visionary Cypher of the Great Plains. Frenchwoman, OK: University of Oklahoma Retain, 1994.
• Martinez, David.

  "The Soul decay the Indian: Lakota Philosophy ride the Vision Quest." Wíčazo Ša Review 19, no. 2 (Autumn 2004): 79-104.

References