Northern Arapaho: Dancing with Eagles

Golden Eagle (by Jason Hickey)

Before European expansion into the Great Plains, members of the Arapaho tribe were living in what is now Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado.  These Arapaho bands eventually coalesced into two tribes:  the Southern Arapaho and the Northern Arapaho.

Wikipedia reports that members of the Northern Arapaho Nation, along with members of the Eastern Shoshone Nation, have lived on the Wind River Reservation (which a February 2012 New York

Times article describes as “a rambling stretch of scrub in central Wyoming the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined”) since 1878.

Worldwide Religious News reported that Winslow Friday, a member of the Northern Arapaho Nation, had killed a bald eagle for use in the 2005 Arapaho Sun Dance “without first obtaining permission to do so from the Interior Department…”  Friday had thus violated the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act; however, he did so in order to uphold a key religious tradition of his people.  In 2006, U. S. District Judge William Downes therefore dismissed a federal charge against Friday on the grounds that “it’s important for the federal government to protect bald eagles, but it also has a compelling interest in preserving Indian tribes and their cultures.”

Crystalinks.com describes the vital roles that eagles play within traditional Sun Dances of the Great Plains. The eagle is referred to as “one of the Plains Indians’ most sacred animals.” Because it flies so high, it is thought of as “the link between man and spirit” and “the messenger that delivers prayers to the Wakan- Tanka (god).”  Baldeagleinfo.com reports that Native tribes from other regions have also considered eagles

to be spiritually essential.  The Aztecs compared “the daily journey of the all-important sun to an eagle’s

flight,” and the Iroquois presented this same analogy within the following poem:  I hear the eagle bird  

With his great feathers spread,  Pulling the blanket back from the east,   How swiftly he flies,   Bearing the sun to the morning.

Resources

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46729054/ns/us_news-environment/

http://www.crystalinks.com/sundance.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/wind-river-indian-reservation-where-brutality-is-banal.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arapaho_people

http://wwrn.org/articles/23065/?&place=united-states&section=native-religions

http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/eagle5.html

Copyright March 15, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved