Indian Rituals In Prison
Freedom of Religion Stripped from Native American Prisoners
In American prisons, Indian inmates struggle against a system dedicated to eradicating Native American indigenous spiritual practices and ceremonies.
Every day is a struggle for Indian prisoners attempting to uphold their traditional daily rituals and spirituality. Colonial prison administrators do not understand that native ceremonies and rituals are not conducted on a weekly basis, separate from quotidian lived reality as in western cultures. Indigenous spirituality is a lived reality that is integrated into daily life, not simply sung about on Sundays and remembered in prayers before bed. Also, spirit may call upon an Indian person at short notice any time of the day or night to make offerings or conduct rituals.
Sacred objects are often denied to the people who so desperately need them as part of everyday living. Sacred pipes, eagle feathers, herbs and so forth are crucial objects that are often confiscated by ignorant colonial administrators and wardens. Many Indians need the smoke from their pipes to carry their prayers to the next world, and so are unable to live and work spiritually without them.
Cultural sensitivity is also severely lacking in this area when it comes to procedures like haircuts; many Native Americans keep long hair as a living extension of thoughts and prayers, and are particular about the disposal of hair when it is cut, as brujos or other malignant people are able to harm them through magic using their hair. So one can imagine how horrific compulsory hair shearing upon incarceration would be for an Indian inmate.
Prison officials remain suspicious and fearful of native ceremonies, imagining (as their pioneer ancestors may have when listening to native drumming) that the "natives are restless" and somehow plotting a revolt.
But just as bible study and prayer can help reform Christian inmates, Native American prisoners who are allowed to conduct sweat lodges and other native ceremonies may experience reductions in alcoholism and anti-social behavior, decreased recidivism rate, and improved self-esteem and dignity. The Supreme Court has even acknowledged this fact.
Yet the spiritual suppression continues, and prison officials continue to employ abusive and coercive tactics to undermine native ritual observance, tactics including physical brutality, mental torture through the use of control units, transferring inmates from facility to facility, prohibiting possession of religious literature and artifacts, general harassment, and also through regulatory loopholes such as insisting upon a minimum number of participants.
It should be noted that this kind of religious persecution does not happen to any other religious group in prison. Freedom of religion remains the final inalienable right of a person who has had all other freedoms stripped away in prison. Not for Native Americans, however. Having lost their lands, their families, children and much of their heritage to the colonists, native prisoners then must give up the last thing they have left - their souls.
