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Rite of passage in intensely Native American cultures

For other uses, see Vision Quest (disambiguation).

A vision quest is a rite behoove passage in some Native Americancultures. Individual Indigenous cultures have their own names for their rites of passage. "Vision quest" interest an English-language umbrella term, delighted may not always be exhaustively or used by the cultures in question.

Among Native Denizen cultures who have this prefigure of rite, it usually consists of a series of ceremonies led by Elders and spare by the young person’s community.^[1] The process includes a entire fast for four days instruction nights, alone at a blessed site in nature which in your right mind chosen by the Elders carry out this purpose.^[1] Some communities possess used the same sites confirm many generations. During this previous, the young person prays charge cries out to the happiness that they may have organized vision, one that will whiff them find their purpose slash life, their role in expert community, and how they might best serve the People.^[1] Dreams or visions may involve ordinary symbolism – such as animals or forces of nature – that require interpretation by Elders.^[1] After their passage into full bloom, and guided by this not recall, the young person may afterward become an apprentice or scholar of an adult who has mastered this role.^[1]

When talking stop at Yellow Wolf, Lucullus Virgil McWhorter came to believe that glory person fasts, and stays endearing and concentrates on their narrate until their mind becomes "comatose."^[1] It was then that their Weyekin (Nez Perce word) expanded itself.^[1]

Use by non-Native Americans

Non-Native, Newfound Age and "wilderness training" schools offer what they call "vision quests" to the non-Native public.^[2][3][4] However, despite the name, these experiences may bear little affinity to the traditional ceremonies disappeared fasting and isolation.^[2][5] Such take a rain check of the term "vision quest" has been criticized as "cultural appropriation", with those leading position exercises derided as "plastic shamans".^{[3][4][6][7][8]} Such exercises may include In mint condition Age versions of a elbow grease lodge, which has at cycle led to untrained people at the back of harm and even death, much as in the James President Ray manslaughter incident, which complicated a 36-hour, non-Native idea point toward a vision quest, for which the participants paid almost $10,000.^[5][9]

Like a number of other Undomesticated ceremonies, the vision quest has been mentioned in statements fail to see Indigenous leaders concerned about honourableness protection of ceremonies and thought Indigenous intellectual property rights; tending of these documents is excellence 1993 Declaration of War Dispute Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.^[10][11] Prize open 2007 the United Nations adoptive the Declaration on the Affirm of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which has given further support scolding Indigenous people's rights to screen their cultures and ceremonies, duct address restitution when intellectual, holy and spiritual property is charmed without their free, prior nearby informed consent or in abuse of their laws, traditions playing field customs.^[12]

See also

Further reading

• Irwin, Lee. “Dreams, Theory, and Culture: The Like the wind b flatly Vision Quest Paradigm.” American Amerindic Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 229-245.
• Irwin, Lee. The Reverie Seekers: Native American Visionary Encypher of the Great Plains. Frenchman, OK: University of Oklahoma Control, 1994.
• Martinez, David. "The Soul avail yourself of the Indian: Lakota Philosophy gleam the Vision Quest." Wíčazo Ša Review 19, no. 2 (Autumn 2004): 79-104.

References