Customer Reviews

Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography

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I have read quite a few books on Earth-honoring indigenous spiritual traditions all over the world. Particularly in New Age circles, there is quite a bit of cotton-candy fluff written for mass consumption to make money for the writer. Then there are the dry, dusty, detached tomes such those by Mircea Eliade written by academics for academics, both the writer and audience usually being white non-practitioners of these traditions.

This book fits neither category, and points out the huge dearth of factual, authentic, detailed information about Native American traditions, from the viewpoints of the practitioners themselves in their own words. It is the biography of a traditional Native American healer and leader of their sundance religion. Yellowtail shares a lot of information about the purpose and preparation of the sundance and other major and minor practices that I had not come across before. It really helps the reader understand that daily prayer and practices form a huge part of traditional Native American spiritual life, much more so than suggested by the myriad works of nonpractitioners.

At times, the description of life before being forced onto reservations seems too good to be true. But nostalgia being an apparently universal human quality, the perhaps overglorification of a lifestyle Yellowtail never lived (he was born on a reservation) can be easily overlooked. The focus of the book is largely the actual experiences of Yellowtail, and they are quite illuminating. It is the spiritual counterpoint to "Cheyenne Memories" by John Stands in Timber.

Almost more importantly, the book describes how the Crow tribe recovered some of it's spiritual practices such as the details of having a sundance ceremony, from the medicine man of the Shoshone tribe, John Trehero. Due to repressive US government policies, some tribes lost the lineage of successive teaching of their spiritual traditions. The all-important one-on-one instruction from teacher to student was lost within those tribes.

The description of a sundance reintroduced and growing to the point where a larger than usual lodge had to be built to accommodate all the dancers, is a wonderful accomplishment. It leaves the reader with a sense of hope that these vitally important traditions, and the understanding they generate of the importance of working and praying together to accomplish the good of the tribe, and therefore the rest of the world, will continue to grow and flourish with succeeding generations.

The western industrialized nations are using (abusing) natural resources at a rate far exceeding the capacity of nature to replenish them, all in the name of greed. And the root cause of this is believing the Earth, and all of the growing things on it to be inanimate objects, things, rather than the living, sentient beings that they are. As long as the belief system of those in power and the millions who put them there sees the natural resources of the Earth as things rather than beings, life for all of us is imperiled. But if the sundance religion and other Earth-honoring religions continue to grow and thrive, there is yet hope left.

Thomas Yellowtail was Shoshone/Crow Sun Dance chief for many years. Here, he discusses his life and the Sun Dance path he walked. You will find his admonition to those who are self-proclaimed Sun Dance chiefs as well as his vision about the difference between the Sun Dance way and the Peyote/Native American Church way. Yellowtail was a strict traditionalist--you will find no woo-woo fluff here. He was a well-respected man amongst his people.

Part One of the book is an account of Thomas Yellowtail's life and it has some interesting factual information. Yet the section on spiritual miracles in the "Indian Medicine" chapter was unconvincing to me.

Part Two of this book is a precisely detailed account of the correct ways to perform ceremonies and rituals in the Sun Dance religion. These include the Sun Dance, Vision Quest, Sweat Lodge, monthly prayer meetings and daily prayers with a sacred pipe.

Natural worship is present in the Sun Dance religion, but beyond that I didn't find spiritual insights that applied to me on a personal level.

What impressed me the most was the dogmatic fortitude of preserving these traditions against the difficulties of reservation life. If it wasn't for traditionally minded individuals like Thomas Yellowtail and John Trehero then many tribes would have lost cultural traditions that have been handed down for centuries. Their efforts to bridge the past and the future are a living gift.