Today we watched a film about the a sacred, spiritual sight that the Lakota tribe and others worship. The film was about how the people who live around the worship area, which is more famously known as Devi’s Peak, and how many tourists and adventurist rock climb this sight. This outraged the natives because this is a religious land mark for them. It is where they perform ceremonies at different times during the year. It is their place of worship, to have people climbing up and down, and poking it with metal rods is very disrespectful to them. It is equivalent to people climbing churches and mosques for fun. This is a place of worship and is part of their religion that they practice. But they are not able to stop people from climbing their land mark because to the climbers as well as the local and state governments, their religious practiced and sights are not considered to be part of their religion because it is outside, it is a part of nature, and therefore cannot be considered a religious sight. This outraged me and made me very disappointed to see how many people are so narrow minded and how much the views of other people conflicts with the natives even today.
makayla7 July 18, 2018
I was also disappointed to see how close minded some people are. Watching this film and listening to how ignorant and arrogant some people are when it comes to religion is sad. Just because the Native Americans don’t practice the Westerners traditional religion does not mean that they deserve to have their religion invalidated. I understand why the Natives are outraged because they are only asking for one month out of the entire year to not climb Devil’s Peak but apparently, that is too much for from the rock climbers and government officials. They do not care about the Native beliefs or their religion in the slightest.
Jonathan July 19, 2018
I completely agree with you Amanda. I felt the locals were very closed minded and disrespectful to the Lakota people. Especially, when the old women made the statement about the prayer bundles were offensive to her and it was like hanging dirty laundry out for people to view. I felt the prayer bundles helped give Devils Tower a more spiritual feel to it and the prayer bundles were very colorful. It just made me feel how would the women feel if someone made the statement the cross was offensive to them. I feel this was a clear example of people the locals failing to understand and respect the Native American culture. This is an example to dehumanize the Native American people.