Tag: vision fast

Vision quest—maintaining sacred tradition

Cultural misappropriation of sacred ceremony

Cultural misappropriation is a danger in adopting Evelyn Eaton's The Shaman and the Medicine Wheeltraditional ceremonies for contemporary use. It is true that peoples on every continent have used solo time in nature for spiritual purposes. It is a human birthright—a way of connecting directly to the natural world and to deeper realms of spiritual realities. Yet so much has been taken from the first peoples of North America, and there have been incidents of anger about Caucasian groups using first peoples customs. Even in cases where a white person has been trained and given permission by a Native American medicine man, such as in the case of author and medicine woman Evelyn Eaton, others in Native American communities have disagreed and been angry with those who allow white participation in their traditional Native American ceremonies such as the pipe ceremony and sweat lodge.

What to do? How to navigate this territory of cultural misappropriation? Certainly, when using or adapting traditional first people ways, it is vitally important to do so with respect and with honouring of the first peoples of the land where we do sacred ceremony, and with thanks for the teachings we have received. The School of Lost Borders, which teaches a modern vision fast rite of passage, changed from using the term vision quest to using the term vision fast. They did this out of consideration for Native Americans.

I believe that in this time of ecological crisis the earth and all the people on it need us to be aware of our interconnectedness with the earth and all living creatures. The old ways of the first peoples are needed, to help foster this awareness. Some Native American leaders and writers agree that the old ways are needed, and they are willing to teach them to all people, regardless of race. With over 50% of the earth’s population living in cities now, we need a ceremony that brings people out into wild nature. And certainly, people of all ages need rites of passage to bring meaning, celebration, and an awareness of being part of the wholeness of our world. I believe that the need for and value of this ceremony is great. My own personal experience of it, fasting annually for the past three years, is that it is so healing and transformative that I want to offer this experience to others. So I have chosen to learn to guide others in the vision fast ceremony as taught by the School of Lost Borders.

BC eagle feathersMy friend Janet, who has the Métis heritage, gave me an eagle feather and sage to use for smudging in the traditional way. I feel she invited me into these ways with her gifts. She has encouraged me to offer the teachings I learn to First Nations people in the Merritt area. I have felt shy about doing this, and think it must be very inappropriate. But she told me to do it. People want to be in the sacred ceremony. In some cases the old ways have been lost to the first peoples themselves, and they are hungry to learn wherever they can. I have invited First Nations people from the Merritt area to events at Monkey Valley, and will continue to do so, even though I still feel very shy about it.

I try to remember to use the sacred ceremonies I have learned with respect for the first peoples. I thank the ancestors of the land where the ceremony is being held. I thank the spirits of the land, and the grandmothers and grandfathers, and ask for their help and guidance in keeping the fasters safe and teaching them what they need to know. The spirits seem to listen and to help. This is all I know.

Vision quest—background

A rite of passage

Peoples of many cultures have created traditions and ceremonies involving solo time in wild Faster in Wyoming's red desertnature. In North America, the plains peoples are the most well-known groups to use the ancient practice of the vision quest. John Murray recounts, in editors Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan’s The Soul of Nature, a story of discovering a vision quest site in Rocky Mountain National Park. Archaeologists from Colorado State University and the National Park Service studied the site and determined it had been used for vision quests and fasts from 10,000 years ago until about 500 years ago. This is remarkable! Long before the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the first peoples of North America had been using spiritual ceremony to help their people live and thrive.

The vision quest was used as a rite of passage to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. The quester would fast from food, people, and shelter. In some groups the faster would go forth naked, with only a bear-skin robe for warmth and protection. Severing from her people (I don’t know for sure if young women participated in this ceremony, or if it was only males in traditional societies who used this rite of passage, but today they definitely do!), the quester would enter a threshold space—a space between worlds, a place of spirit. The faster would be invisible to her people—a spirit form—until returning back across the threshold, sometimes after four days and four nights of fasting, sometimes for different periods of time. Upon returning, the quester would tell her story of the fast. The story would be received by her elders, and the entire community would know that the quester had successfully crossed over into adulthood. She might have received a vision, or a gift to bring back to her people. Incorporation, the final stage of the vision fast process, would involve living her gift or vision—bringing it back to her people, and making it real.

There are historical accounts of Native Americans who saw the coming of Christopher Columbus’s ship in a vision, but didn’t know what it was because they had never seen a ship before. There are many accounts of first peoples visionaries seeing the coming of the “white man” and the ensuing drastic effects on their way of life.

Today, First Nation peoples in some parts of North America still use the vision quest ceremony. Contemporary groups such as the School of Lost Borders and Monkey Valley Retreat Centre also put people out on the land to undergo the rite of passage of the vision fast. See the Links page for other contemporary organizations who offer vision fasts.