The Transformative Power of Ceremony Theme Analysis

Publicly performed ceremonies are an important part of Lakota culture: ritualized ceremonies like the sun dance are critical ways for Lakota people to acquire spiritual “power” and “endurance.” Black Elk Speaks frames ceremonies as more than symbolic, spiritual gestures, however. The ceremonies that Black Elk highlights in his narrative suggest that ceremony can elicit real change on the world by allowing its participants and observers to form new perspectives of reality, ultimately inspiring them to engage in actions that have lasting consequences.

One example of a ceremony that is performed to bring about understanding is the horse dance. As Black Elk grows older, he becomes increasingly troubled by his inability to understand and act on the vision he had as a child. As a result, he continues to isolate from others and grow ill. His parents consult a medicine man named Black Road to help. At this point, Black Elk is so frightened and troubled by his inability to act on his vision that he tells Black Road everything. Black Road tells Black Elk, “Nephew, I know now what the trouble is! You must do what the bay horse in your vision wanted you to do. You must do your duty and perform this vision for your people upon earth. You must have the horse dance first for the people to see.” Black Road’s advice emphasizes the critical role that the horse dance—or, the ceremonial performance or display of Black Elk’s vision—plays in Black Elk’s path toward understanding and ultimately acting on his vision. After Black Elk and other members of his band perform the horse dance, reenacting Black Elk’s initial vision, he has another vision. He sees the “tepee built of cloud and sewed with lightning, the flaming rainbow door and, underneath, the Six Grandfathers sitting, and all the horses thronging in their quarters, and also [himself] upon the bay before the tepee.” Performing the ceremonial horse dance allows Black Elk to revisit the forces at play in his initial vision, which allows him to better make sense of them and know exactly what he has to do for his people. Black Elk explains, “I looked about me and could see that what we then were doing was like a shadow cast upon the earth from yonder vision in the heavens, so bright it was and clear. I knew the real was yonder and the darkened dream of it was here.” Here, Black Elk deems the ceremonial horse dance as a “darkened dream” and his vision as “the real.” Performing the ceremony allows Black Elk to realize the connection between ceremony and higher spiritual truths. The “darkened dream” of higher knowledge that ceremonies represent is gate to higher understanding. Performing the horse dance allows Black Elk to communicate his vision to his people in a way he hadn’t been able to before, as well as better understand his vision than he did before. As a result of the horse dance ceremony, Black Elk and his people are more understanding and accepting of his vision.

Another example of a ceremony that has real consequences is the Ghost Dance movement that develops among various tribes in the late 19th century. The Ghost Dance creates both positive and negative results: on the one hand, it revitalizes tribes, instilling within them a final hope that they could restore their increasingly stifled cultures and traditional way of life. But on the other hand, this resurgence of hope makes Wasichus (white people) feel threatened, and they respond with force to stop the Ghost Dance, culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Ghost Dance movement is started by a man from the Paiute tribe whom the Wasichus call Jack Wilson and the Indians call Wovoka. According to Wovoka—whom the Indians believe is a Wanekia, or messiah—the end of the world is near, and if the people put “sacred red paint” on their faces and “dance a sacred ghost dance,” then they will be able to access a better world, in which “there was plenty of meat, just like old times,” and in which “all the dead Indians were alive, and all the bison that had ever been killed were roaming around again.” In other words, by performing this ceremonial Ghost Dance, the culture, people, and animals that were all casualties of westward expansion could be restored, and the people could live in paradise. Black Elk first hears about Wovoka in 1889, after Black Elk’s father, brother, and sister have died, and by which point the Lakota people’s situation is dire: they have less land than ever before, they are ravaged by disease, and they are starving. For these reasons, the possibilities that Wovoka’s Ghost Dance ceremony represent—to save the Indians and resurrect their dead and their culture—are especially appealing. The Ghost Dance is promising for Black Elk, who comes to see the ceremony and its sacred symbols and thematic goals as parallel to those of his own grand vision.

Participating in the Ghost Dance movement gives Black Elk and many others a renewed sense of hope in their ability to restore their vanishing old way of life—but the Ghost Dance movement has dire consequences, as well. As the movement spreads across different tribes, the Wasichu strive to put an end to the ritual dance movement, for fear that it will lead to future revolts. They begin to enforce limits on when and how frequently Indians can participate in ghost dances. Tensions between Indians and Wasichus grow, culminating in the death of Sitting Bull, who is killed resisting arrest, and in the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which the U.S. Army massacre hundreds of Lakota after Lakota men refuse to give up their guns. The grim aftermath of the Ghost Dance movement shows that while ceremony offers the possibility of deeper understanding and community engagement, it can also lead to dire, unanticipated consequences.