By Yiping Zou
Spring 2025
Imagine being told that you cannot pray. Not quietly, not openly, not in a way passed down by your ancestors for hundreds of years. Imagine being told that your most sacred ceremonies are illegal. That something your community turns to for healing, for guidance, for survival must stop.
This was the painful reality for many Indigenous communities in the United States. To the U.S. government in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Indigenous spirituality stood in the way of assimilation (Calloway 2018). The government’s goal was to “civilize” Native people by cutting them off from their land, language, culture, and beliefs. Ceremonies like the Sun Dance allowed communities to maintain their identity and remember who they were. That made them dangerous. Not in any physical sense, but in their power to preserve sovereignty of the mind and spirit.
The Sun Dance, a ceremony that has deep connections to the land and spiritual renewal, was once banned by the U.S. government. It was not banned because it was violent, but because it was powerful. A people’s spiritual strength can be threatening to a system built on control.
The Sun Dance is not easily understood by outsiders. It is not a show or entertainment. It is prayer in motion. It includes multi-day fasting, dancing, and sacrifice offered to restore balance to the world. It brings families and communities together. It expresses the belief that all living things are connected, and that suffering for the good of others is a sacred act. It is precisely because of this spiritual strength that U.S. officials feared it.
Why would a government fear a prayer?
Among the Kiowa, the Sun Dance was their most sacred summer ceremony. It united the community and gave strength to endure hardship. But after the buffalo herds were wiped out and restrictions increased, the ceremony became nearly impossible. The last known Kiowa Sun Dance of the 19th century took place in 1887 (Calloway 2018). What was once a communal spiritual act becoming a memory, pushed underground by policies of erasure.
But Native people did not stay silent.
In 1919, Lakota leaders from the Standing Rock Reservation wrote a letter to U.S. officials, begging to keep their dances. The letter, titled “Our Hearts Are Almost Broken,” was not written in protest, but in grief and dignity. They explained that after sending their sons to fight in World War I, their only way to honor them and to heal as a community was to dance.
One part of the letter said:
“We have ever since 1868 been obedient to the United States Government. We have done our very best to comply with the regulations on this Reservation. We have sent our children to school to be educated to learn to manage their future life affairs. We have given our boys to a great World War. Many of our boys have been killed and some are wounded, account of this our hearts are almost broken but again we are glad that we have done our part in this great war” (No Heart et al 1919).
They said they danced in simple clothes, without paint, in peace. Yet their ceremonies were banned.
They asked,
“What else can we do to be recognized as obedient people?” (No Heart et al 1919).
Their question was not rhetorical. It came from a deep place of pain. They followed the law. They showed loyalty. But still, they were denied the most basic right: to pray in their own way.
Can a law grant freedom without power?
In 1978, nearly sixty years after that letter, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed. It finally recognized the rights of Native people to practice their traditional religions, including the Sun Dance (Calloway 2018).
On paper, it looked like progress. In practice, it wasn’t enough.
AIRFA lacked any real enforcement. It said Native people could pray, but it did not stop agencies from blocking access to sacred land or punishing people for using sacred objects. For example, some tribes still could not hold their ceremonies in their traditional locations due to federal land use restrictions. In some cases, permits were denied or sacred sites were made inaccessible. Also, when sacred practices involved items like peyote (a cactus used in specific ceremonial contexts) participants were often criminalized for drug possession rather than protected for their religious rites (Calloway 2018).
Reuben Snake, a respected Ho-Chunk leader, saw this clearly. In 1992, he gave a powerful speech defending the use of peyote in the ceremony. He asked: if Native people were moral, peaceful, and law-abiding, why were their spiritual practices still under attack? He pointed out that no evidence existed of crime or harm from the Native American Church (Snake 1992). They were still treated like suspects. His testimony also revealed something painful: Indigenous religions were still seen as inferior, even under the law that claimed to protect them. Freedom written in law means little if it is not respected in life.
What does it mean to survive without being seen?
For generations, Native people have fought to keep their ceremonies alive. It is not just for cultural pride, but for spiritual survival. In 1978, during a protest march called The Longest Walk, leaders from several nations spoke about how U.S. policies had harmed their communities. They described forced sterilizations, child removals, and religious bans as part of a long-term effort to erase Native existence. They used international law to name what was happening: genocide (Diné, Lakota, and Haudenosaunee Traditional Leaders 1978).
This is a difficult word to hear. But it must be heard.
What they described was not just the killing of people. It was the killing of memory, the banning of prayer, the removal of future generations. The Sun Dance stood at the center of that struggle. It is not as a symbol, but as a living act of spiritual resistance. To keep dancing was to refuse disappearance. It was to say: we are still here.
The Sun Dance is still practiced today. It survived. Some communities never stopped, even when it was dangerous to continue. Others revived the ceremony through stories, songs, and quiet gatherings. Now, many Native nations hold annual Sun Dances with deep reverence. They pray for the sick, for the Earth, for their children. They offer their pain as healing.
The Sun Dance is not only a ceremony. It is a mirror of strength. It shows what happens when faith is stronger than fear, when people refuse to let go of what makes them whole. The story of the Sun Dance is not just about religion. It is about survival, about dignity, about the struggle to remain human in a world that tried to erase the belief.
It reminds us that spiritual freedom cannot be granted by courts or governments. It must be lived and protected by the people who need it most. It also reminds us that the fight is not over. Ceremonies are still questioned. Sacred lands are still threatened. Misunderstanding still lingers.
But the dancers are still dancing.
Their feet rise and fall to the rhythm. Their songs rise in the air. In every step, every breath, they speak what no policy could erase.
References
Calloway, Colin G. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018.
Diné, Lakota, and Haudenosaunee Traditional Leaders. “Our Red Nation (1978).” In Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, edited by Daniel M. Cobb, 180–183. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469624815_cobb.47.
No Heart et al. “Our Hearts Are Almost Broken (1919).” In Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, edited by Daniel M. Cobb, 35–38. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469624815_cobb.11.
Snake, Reuben. “This Way of Life—The Peyote Way (1992).” In Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, edited by Daniel M. Cobb, 192–194. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469624815_cobb.50.
