Hitching a Ride on the Red Road: Ancient Native American Path Beacons Jackson Hole's Earth-Based Spiritualists

By Danielle Shapiro
5.29.05

I met Janet Woodland in her office at St. John's Hospital, but we did not stay long. She changed and we were off, heading up winding Curtis Canyon road, talking all the way. She told me of the horses she has loved and lost, of the spirits that guide her, and of her faith.

Woodland is one of a small group in Jackson Hole that regularly studies and practices Native American spiritual traditions.

Woodland primarily follows the traditions of the Native American Lakota tribe, whose rituals and ceremonies lead her to the sacred. Though raised an Episcopalian and having attended a Unitarian Church, Woodland said that this Earth-based spiritual path, grounded in nature and respect for all beings – two-legged, four-legged or no-legged – is where she finds most resonance.

"[These ceremonies] are for me a way to get grounded," she said while driving. "They are a vehicle to getting to a sacred place in my head, to my true intention. It would be so hard for me to talk in my office, the square world of work. But outside, the round world is where we feel the spirituality, the connections."

About half way up the road, we reached the vortex, a site the ancients believed to have especially strong energy, because of its connectedness to a star system overhead. Woodland told me there is incredible feminine energy here. "My cousin once said it is like sitting on a pregnant belly," she recalled.

With intermittent rain and snow, we sought drier ground in a tight, enclosed, tree-covered area. Though the splatter from the trees proved an unsuccessful choice, we stayed put, because it didn't matter: The inclement conditions made the experience better, and I was taken by the surrounding and towering trees, the fresh earth and the feeling that my presence was noted, not recorded.

Carefully, umbrella perilously rested on her shoulder, Woodland laid out blankets for a chanupa (pipe) ceremony. She placed her furs – beaver and fox, representing family – she burnt the smudge – sweet, fresh, salty smelling sage – and we wafted the smoke over our bodies to cleanse ourselves, to prepare for prayers. Joining her raven-shaped bowl and stem, Woodland explained that the joint pipe symbolized the union of female and male in prayer. We hold the bowl in our left hand and the stem in our right. We support the chanupa as it supports us.

I offered into the tobacco a prayer that I would send to the Creator in smoke; Woodland summoned the spirits in every direction. We smoked the pipe until there was no tobacco left, then we sat and talked and Woodland told me many more stories. She left the sage we had used next to a tree, gently touching the bark.

Leaving, she told me, "I couldn't live without my pipe anymore. It's how I pray, it's how I find my center on a day to day basis."

The Basics

Woodland is one of a small group in Jackson that regularly studies and practices Native American spiritual traditions. With her 10-person spirit family, spread between Jackson, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, Woodland attends Sun Dances and sweat lodges and regularly goes to her chanupa. Though they are few in number, her spirit family is deeply devoted to the Red Road, the Native American spiritual way.

It would be impossible, and unfair, to generalize when it comes to Native American spiritual traditions. Every tribe has distinct methods, stories and beliefs. Yet, they do share common elements in some of their most sacred rituals and basic worldviews.

"We believe in the creator," said James Trosper, a Sun Dance leader who lives in Fort Washakie, Wyo., on the Wind River Reservation. Trosper is Shoshone on his mother's side, Arapahoe on his father's side, and the great-great-grandson of legendary Chief Washakie. "When other religions first came here, they didn't understand that we were not praying to the sun, the buffalo, the eagle. These are messengers from the Creator. They are important and sacred, but they do not take the place of the Creator ... We believe that we are all a part of the Creator and in the interconnectedness of the Creator. The trees, animals ... all have a spirit, and we're all connected."

Few refer to the sum of Native American spiritual practices as a religion, in the Western Judeo-Christian sense.

"Earth-based spirituality can't be understood unless it is experienced," said Timothy O'Donoghue, founder of the nonprofit Wind River Foundation, who claims a good mixture of Irish, German and Algonquin (northeast Woodland Indian) heritage. "There is no such thing as a Native American religion ... there's no doctrine. The belief system is spirituality. Each tribe might have what could be called a religion with sacred ceremonies, but there is no one Native American religion."

Kent Spence is a local attorney who said he identifies most closely with Native American traditions. "I think that God and the idea of God is so beyond our minds that people get lost in it. When you have an Earth-based experiential spirituality, it's just simple, it's real, it's right there ... it doesn't require religious scripture or philosophy for people to argue about to determine the correct interpretation."

David Bearclaw Abrams, teacher to many members of the Jackson-based spirit family, emphasized that the Red Road means thoroughly implementing prayer and respect for all your relations into daily life. Abrams discovered his Cherokee heritage as a teenager and has been devoted ever since.

"I start my morning with prayer and I end my morning with prayer," he said. "There is no Sabbath day because every day is sacred."

Abrams recognized that "religion" can be anything communicating the sacred.

"Religions are vehicles to bring you to your spiritual self and to God," he said. "Every denomination was started by a man. If you have an understanding that you're surrounded by God, that you're part of God, then you don't need a denomination to carry you to God."

Heavy in ceremony and ritual, Native American spiritual practices are visual, experiential and replete with images of animals and nature. A deep respect for the Earth is central, and all things are reflections of the Creator. In the Lakota tradition, this is best expressed in the term "mitakyue oasin," which means "all my relations."

"They say that as we would say the word 'amen' – after a prayer, speech or declaration," said Susan Chernak McElroy, a writer who has studied Native American spirituality for seven years and a spirit family member. She also has danced in the Sun Dance for four years and is now studying to become and Episcopalian priest. Native American traditions captivated her "because when we do participate in these ceremonies, you call into the winds, seas, stones, directions, animals, trees, everything. It's not just me and the Lord; I have a huge treasure chest to draw on when life gets tough."

Sacred Ceremonies

The seven sacred rites in the Lakota tradition are Keeping of the Soul, Rite of Purification, Crying for a Vision, the Sun Dance, Making of Relatives, Preparing a Girl for Womanhood and Throwing of the Ball.

Trosper highlighted the Naming Ceremony, a fasting rite for adolescent boys, sweat ceremonies, various purification/blessing ceremonies, the Bundle-Opening ceremony and the Sun Dance as sacred to the Shoshones. Though he works full time as the director of Indian Child Welfare on the Wind River Reservation, he is often called to lead sweat lodges or to cedar families' homes and lead prayers. He visits the sick in the hospital and performs funerals and weddings. People look to him when they are experiencing family problems, sicknesses, or just a need for prayer and blessing.

A Sweat Lodge ceremony includes sitting in a hot, tent-like structure. Heated rocks – known as Grandfather Rocks – warm the space. The center of the lodge is the womb of Mother Earth. Water poured over the rocks turn to steam, carrying a person's physical impurities out of the body and up to the Creator in the vapors.

"It is a spiritual cleanse, too," Trosper explained. "Then we can get back on the Red Road to the Creator. It's up to us if we go back to our old ways. When we leave the womb of mother earth, it's as if we are reborn and we can start with a clean slate."

Trosper leads sweats once weekly, though there have been times when he's led a sweat every day for a week.

"It keeps me pretty busy," he said.

For Jay Henderson, another Jackson spirit family member, his first experience of a sweat lodge seven years ago was transformative.

"It grabbed hold, and I've been to everything I can ever since then," he said. "I was born and raised Mormon and I went to church. There you get a lot of religion and only a little spirituality. When I go to a sweat, I get a lot of spirituality and only a little religion, or tradition."

Most every acolyte dreams of participating in a Sun Dance, an intense week-long ritual that includes building the Sun Dance lodge and performing the three- or four-day Sun Dance, in which dancers fast (no food or water) while dancing from sunrise to sunset. The ceremony ends with a feast.

"I love the dance," said Abrams, who has danced in a Lakota Sun Dance for eight years. "The dance is only four days, but my first step out of the dance is preparing to dance again. I spend the whole year dancing, walking each day as a prayer, preparing myself to give the best gift I can give when I go into the Sun Dance."

According to Trosper, the specifications to build the sacred, circular Sun Dance lodge are ancient and strict. Twelve cottonwood trees, cut with a blessed axe, are used to support the lodge structure. Twenty-four lodge pole pines are used for further support and rafters. The center pole is the largest cottonwood collected.

Once the dancers enter this space on the first evening, no one else is allowed inside the circle. The dancers, while blowing on eagle bone whistles, dance up to the center pole and back creating a prayer line. Fire-keepers, drummers, singers and other supporters (like women, who prepare food all day long for supporters and the closing feast) round out the ritual's participants. The dances, songs and drumming are all considered prayers.

Though the Sun Dance is an extreme test of strength, endurance, faith and the dancer's capacity to withstand pain, for the participants it is not a selfish, prideful pursuit. It is, as most rituals are, for mitakyue oasin.

"It's for the people, the world, all our relations," explained Abrams. "I think the world is in a sad state of affairs. Our culture is a faker's society. So this is something that I can do to help the people – to walk the talk, to influence people and to be as good as I can be."

While women do not dance in the Shoshone tradition, McElroy started as a fire keeper for three years at the Lakota Sun Dance where Abrams dances, and began dancing in her fourth year.

"On that third year, as I was watching the dancers file in I thought, 'Thank God I'm not called to do that, because I don't think I could survive,'" she related. "Then I heard a feminine voice and it called me, laughing, laughing, and it said there's something for me to learn. I realized I had to [dance]."

McElroy continued: "You always want the infinite to speak to you. Then, when it does, you say, 'No, don't say that!'"

McElroy said that the second day of the Sun Dance is the hardest; the fourth day leaves her exhausted but exhilarated. "You pass through all the psychological stages of life – the entire human panorama of psychological experiences. I get angry, bitchy, mean, sad, whiny. I complain. I cry. And then there is a point when you realize you are being carried."

Trosper echoed these sentiments, noting that part of the Sun Dance, in his experience, is recognition of your relationship to the Creator. It is about knowing that what feels so important day to day is not so relevant after all.

"When you fast, you are becoming purified; you're cleansing your body," he explained. "On a spiritual level it's like you are making a transition to a different realm – you see things differently, you feel things differently. When you have gone without food or water you become humble, at peace. You realize how dependent you are upon the Creator ... therefore, I'm more thankful to him. When I pray to him, it's more sincere."

For McElroy, the Sun Dance is an unrivaled accomplishment.

"It has been the most amazing spiritual experience of my life and the thing I am most proud of," she said. "I've sailed to the South Pacific and gotten through hurricanes, I've survived cancer ... but the Sun Dance was the most amazing experience in my life."

Why the Red Road?

"When I was a child, I was always mesmerized by everything in nature. That was my solitude," said Ilene Zwerin, explaining her interest in Lakota traditions. A long-time Jackson resident, about four years ago, Zwerin became the newest member to the spirit family. "When I was a child, this way spoke to me so much ... This is just part of the steps I've always been walking."

For many, initial interest in Native American spirituality was piqued as Zwerin's was – through nature. Yet, beyond the foundational lessons about respecting the Earth comes a deeply nuanced understanding of what interconnectedness means. That has been the glue that binds these followers to the Red Road.

"In the Native American perspective, animals, trees, rocks, insects – they are all considered our brothers and sisters," said O'Donoghue. "Knowing that, there comes humility, versus the arrogance of thinking that everything here is in service of humans." O'Donoghue said it's about caring for each other – including the animals, streams, mountains, etc – not just in terms of stewardship but also because each brother and sister is an expression of God.

"So, if you insult one, then you are insulting God," he said.

Implicit here is a kind of expansive nonjudgment and tolerance.

"One of the things I like the best is honoring everyone for who they are and not trying to change them," said Alan Willes, a drum maker and spirit family member. "In the Native American tradition, the whole depends on the one, and each person needs to find their place."

Many of Jackson's Native American practitioners also noted the way such acceptance allows ample respect for other religions. Native Americans do not proselytize, and they do not preclude people from seeking other paths to the sacred. It is not about one way being the right way; it's about all the ways leading to the same place. All religions are, like everything else, connected.

"The one path that appeals to me the most is the Native American one," said Zwerin, who has studied most of the world's major religions – she is currently reading the Koran and plans to read the Kabbalah next. "That doesn't mean that I don't have spiritual moments in the Jewish synagogue, Catholic church or the Mormon church, because God is God is God."

"Native American traditions have given soulful meaning to all the other religions that I've studied," she continued. "It's brought them together for me in the form of ritual and ceremony ... I see that all the religions of the world are walking the path with me because we are all one ... I don't care what color your skin or your nationality."

For McElroy, who is now following a calling back to the Episcopal church – something she says she "could never have imagined in a million years" – the emerging connectivity between Native American teachings and Christianity are potent.

"You walk with the sacred around you, every day, every minute," she said. "As I explore Christianity more, I discover it says the same thing, just a little more confusing ... After years of hostility, I am beginning to find the indigenosity of Christianity."

On the reservation, several churches and missions exist – a legacy to the influence of European culture on Native Americans. Though Trosper said many Shoshone do attend church, they continue to stick by their traditional Native American ways.

"The outside of the medicine wheel in Wyoming is the outside of the world," he said. "Many different spokes lead to the Creator. All the different spokes are different religions – they may look different, but they all lead to the same place."

Little Box

As part of Memorial Day observances, a Pipes for Peace ceremony will be held 9 a.m. Monday on the Town Square to honor all who have fallen in war. Several members of Jackson Hole's spirit family will be in attendance.

Hitching a Ride on the Red Road: Exploiters or worshippers?

In June 1993, participants at the Lakota Summit V, an international gathering of U.S. and Canadian Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Nations, passed a proclamation entitled "Declaration of War Against the Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality." The document called for an end to the abuse, misrepresentation and commercialization of Lakota, Dakota and Nakota spiritual practices by "'wannabes,' hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers and self-styled 'New Age shamans' and their followers." It blasted, among other things, the sale of sacred pipes in flea markets, distorted representations of Lakota spirituality in the media and "plastic medicine men" or "white men's shamans" who rose from tribal ranks to exploit ceremonies for profit. It was a literal declaration of war and it was vehement.

Controversy about whether non-Native Americans should participate in, learn about and practice traditional sacred rites of indigenous people is a source of long-standing tension between Native Americans and non-natives. And yet, with growing interest in indigenous cultures, how does one define what is appropriate or acceptable?

Here in Wyoming, the issue has played out as a case of cultural sensitivity at Devil's Tower National Monument in northeast Wyoming, a haven for climbers and a sacred site to Northern Plains Native Americans for centuries. The climbers want to climb, and the Native Americans don't want their sacred place desecrated with bolts and ropes. Nor do they cherish the shouts of happy athletes interrupting spiritual ceremonies.

In response, the National Park Service in 1995 instituted a Climbing Management Plan, complete with a voluntary climbing closure that asks climbers to respect the traditions of Native Americans and refrain from climbing in the month of June, when many important ceremonies take place. The plan has largely worked, though not without glitches: An unsuccessful suit filed in 1996 against the park claimed that the plan violated First Amendment rights because it banned climbing on religious grounds. Though technically resolved at Devil's Tower, the issue is still ripe for Native Americans and those of non-native heritage who treasure the ceremonies they have learned and, in some cases, rely on for spiritual succor.

"The biggest challenge is that I'm a white girl with no indigenous heritage," said Susan Chernak McElroy. "One year I almost didn't go back to the Sun Dance. I think that's what keeps me from going deeper in this tradition." McElroy's concerns force questions about her role carrying a pipe, dancing in Sun Dance and straddling two cultures that have been at war. Ultimately, she said, "It's such a huge part of my life, it creates chances for learning." The spirit family to which McElroy and other Jacksonites belong has discussed the issue together. Their conclusion? They will not be put off. "We talked about the Lakota proclamation a lot," said Janet Woodland, another member of the group. "We all wanted to honor ... the Native American leaders, but at the same time these ceremonies and way of being in the world have become such a part of our lives, that where do we draw the line? ... In our spirit family we decided that what we do is for the people. If oneness is really true, what difference could it make that we aren't fully Lakota?" Woodland emphasized her respect for the Native American leaders and their desire to keep the ceremonies sacred, preserve their authenticity and preserve the old ways. That's why David Bearclaw Abrams, the part-Cherokee teacher of many members of the Jackson-based spirit family, teaches the old traditions, she said.

While a declaration of war is a serious statement, James Trosper, an Arapaho-Shoshone who leads Sun Dances on the Wind River Reservation, said the Lakota proclamation was not entirely fair. "I agree we don't want exploiters," he said. "But not all white people will exploit." Trosper does not exclude non-natives from learning and participating in some ceremonies, but he does require a high degree of commitment before being brought further into the fold. He has invited several non-natives to come to his Sun Dance as supporters, but only one white person has danced. "You can't put all whites in one category and say just because they are white they can't appreciate our spirituality," he said. "With sweats, I never discourage non-Indians from coming. But I do want them to understand it, because it's sacred."

But with the Sun Dance, he has to be more strict. "There I discourage non-Indians from participating because they first need a real good understanding of it. It may be several years before I can determine that their heart is in the right place. As Indians we are raised with this and we can't expect non-Indians to get it overnight."

Trosper's point, that a person's intention is highly significant, makes sense to Ilene Zwerin, another white follower of Lakota traditions. "The Sun Dance is not just for the curious," she said, underscoring the deeply reverential days of continuous prayer that compose this annual rite. "It is only for those who truly want to pray."

Citing historical inequities and abuses, members of the Jackson spirit family are not surprised by the hesitance of some tribes to include them and share their sacred lives. "I think there is a lot of cultural mistrust – and rightly so – of a lot of Native Americans toward their white brothers because of events in the past," reflected Zwerin. "I can understand that. As times goes on, more Native Americans will rise above that as they get farther away from the events that created those feelings and can have more positive spiritual experiences with their white brothers." For the time being, the sharing will continue. Abrams sees a great benefit to this, because he believes deeply in these ancient ways.

"I think the Native American belief system can possibly work for all people because it's a system of respect," he said. "Even if you dislike someone, if you look at them as one of your relations, then you love them ... This belief system allows me to walk in love and respect for everyone."