Native American Religion

At the beginning of European contact with the Western Hemisphere in the 16th century, there were literally hundreds of small-scale traditional or tribal religions throughout the Americas. At the core of many of those religions were expressions of the creative power as a goddess who grew from the power of women and the feminine. Many new religious movements among Native Americans over the centuries of contact grew from both Native traditions and unique interpretations of Christian teachings, which also focused on the role of women in bringing God or the gods to life on Earth.

By the start of the 20th century, many tribal religions, especially in North America, had diminished or disappeared due to violence, disease, missionization, and a systematic persecution of Native American [Page 1002]religious traditions. As women's rights became an issue in industrialized nations and women gained the right to vote in many parts of the world, restrictions against traditional religious practice among Native Americans began to ease and a resurgence of interest in the preservation of traditional philosophies among tribal nations emerged.

In Native American religions, as in most religions, the first contact with the sacred is through our mothers. Membership in a tribal religion is through birth from a woman, affiliation with a clan with its requisite clan mothers, or membership in a tribe where women were the head of the family, the clan, or recognized as the chief or head of the tribe. Birth is a sacred event and is marked by Native religious practice as something more than a woman having a baby. The tribe has a new citizen and at birth becomes a son or daughter, grandchild, niece or nephew, and the responsibility of the entire tribal community. A name for the newborn is given from or through the ancestors or spirits associated with the tribal religion, and family, clan, and tribe realizes the promise of new life and a continuation of the ancestral ways.

For every child, puberty signals another time of ceremony to celebrate the acquisition of more responsibility and status: in Native American religions, the puberty ceremony for the transition of girls to women is more marked than it is for boys. A girl's menarche, or first menses, engenders an intense time of teaching about her fecundity and potential contribution to the future of the entire tribe. The ceremonies of menarche are often four days of fasting, sweating, instruction on the role of women in the tribe, and the acquisition of power through the changes in her body. She is a new woman, and as such can attract good or bad intentions from other tribal members or even outsiders who might exploit her power for their own selfish ends.

Throughout the life of each Native American, these transitions are noted by contact with women of the tribe; mother, grandmother, wife, daughter, and grandchildren, as well a recognition of the power of the feminine at the heart of those rites of passage. Women give birth to boys and girls, marry men, heal and mourn the dead men or women-and replace the dead with their power to give birth.

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