DREAM PERFORMANCE IN THREE NATIVE

AMERICAN RITUALS

Nancy Geyer

Northwestern University

The idea of ritual providing the spiritual and psychological means of crossing thresholds in life "safely" is one that absolutely fascinates me. Even more so does the idea that if society does not provide these "saving symbols" from without through ritual, then the psyche will provide them from within, through dreams and visions. My personal and academic search has led me to look for social mechanisms by which a whole people—whether a family or an entire culture—revitalizes itself by activating these "saving symbols" from the unconscious. My Ph.D. dissertation topic is, in fact, "Dream Performance: As Ritual, as Theater, as Therapy."

The most exciting example I have found is the native American experience. Native Americans are people for whom the dream and vision form the very core of their existence. Social roles within Indian society—especially those that have to do with leading, healing and worshiping—are responses to the call which individuals receive in certain culturally significant dreams. Important tribal decisions are often made in obedience to dream or vision instructions. Furthermore, the creativity of their arts is often the direct result of gifts from dream-vision spirits, gifts which are received and executed within longstanding traditional conventions. This paper is but a brief survey of three examples of the way native American culture provided, at crucial historical moments, social mechanisms for handling these rich and healing materials from the unconscious. Here we'll see the intersecting point within tribal culture of religious worship, psychological and medical therapy, and theatrical entertainment. Truly an organic experience, practically all the arts were involved in some way—singing, dancing, percussion, painting, story- telling and architecture.

Black Elk

The story of Black Elk, so beautifully told in Black Elk Speaks (9), is well known by now. At the age of nine, young Black Elk fell deathly ill and experienced a vision which changed him forever. At the age of 17 he was told by Black Road, the old medicine man, "You must do your duty and perform this vision for your people upon earth ... if you do not do this, something very bad will happen to you." (9, p. 135).