On Tuesday, June 25th, 2024, I was honored to attend part of a Spiritual Dance at the Durfee State Prison in Springfield, SD.  It was similar to a sun dance except that it was just one day long and piercing was not allowed.

 

The spiritual dance was like a mini-sun dance.  It started and ended with a sweat.  The men danced in the sweat lodge area and went without food or drink all day.  It was a hot day.  They were barefoot and wore long red skirts.  Their chests were bare.  They wore  red cloth crowns on their heads.  They were not able to wear the traditional sage grass bracelets and anklets because they weren't able to get sage in time.  I'm sure most of them sunburned since I burned and and sat mostly in the shade for only part of the day.  When the final sweat was over, they gathered for a meal of buffalo stew and fry bread.  A little over a dozen men danced and other men sang at the drum and tended the fire all day.  Count was done at the lodge.

 

Getting permission to hold this dance was a very big deal.  Some prisons with indigenous inmates don't even have inipi (sweat) lodges or limit the inmates to one sweat a month.  The sun dance is one of the seven sacred rites of the Lakota.  It has great meaning to the Lakota people.  A full sun dance lasts four days.

 

As far as I know, this was the first ceremony like it anywhere in a prison.  This was the culmination of four years of planning.  Covid stopped the original planned date.  Many thanks to George Apple for leading the ceremony.  Due to the length of their sentences, some of the dancers will never have the chance to sun dance on their reservation.  This ceremony touched me to the bottom of my heart.

 

Mary Montoya