Amongst the Lakota Sioux, like many Native American groups in the United States and elsewhere, what is important regarding landscape is not mere contemplation of landscape but interaction with it. Ritual and ceremony are chief ways by which a Lakota interacts with his or her landscape.
According to some specialists in Native American studies, rituals are performed when there is imbalance in the universe, between humans and the rest of nature. Special rituals are performed in order to reinstate balance and harmony among living things. In the course of this article we will see that cosmic relationship is reinforced within Lakota ritual. As Paula Gunn Allen says:
"The purpose of a ceremony is to integrate: to fuse the individual with his or her fellows, the community of people with that of the other kingdoms, and this larger communal group with the worlds beyond this one. A raising or expansion of individual consciousness naturally accompanies this process. The person sheds the isolated, individual personality and is restored to conscious harmony with the universe" (Allen 1986:62).1
This article is based on descriptions of rituals already available to the public in published form. Although I carried out anthropological fieldwork in South Dakota between 1998 and 1999 and attended several sweat lodge, vision quest, yuwipi and sundance ceremonies during those 12 months, I have chosen not to relay my own observations here or elsewhere because I did not seek permission from the ceremonial leaders and participants at the time. My desire to attend these rituals was strictly personal, not professional.
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