Lakota Virtue

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Eighty- seven percent of the Native American population died from 1620 to 1680. However, in the last decade it jumped to 27 percent. After the whites took the land, they tried to convert them to Christianity, but the Lakota manage to preserve the traditions, ceremonies, and virtues. The Lakota has virtues that are crucial to the Lakota way of living – bravery, generosity, wisdom, respect, fortitude, honor, love, humility, perseverance, love, sacrifice, truth, and compassion. You learn them through your own personal lessons and Lakota tales. Three of the virtues have essential lessons you will eventually learn, such as how life demands perseverance, making sacrifices for our families, and showing bravery in the face of pain. While being removed …show more content…

Even little sacrifices like taking some time out of your schedule to fold someone else’s clothes or just labors of love that can go a long way. An example of sacrifice is the story of the one person who sacrificed himself to save the people from drought and famine by turning himself into a bison. A man had a wife and daughter. He gave them everything they needed and wanted, the daughter had all expensive toys and latest fashionable clothes. One evening he visited his daughter in her room and was puzzled to see all of her expensive toys in the back of the room. Next to the girl’s bed was a hand written note pinned to the wall. The man recognized his own handwriting. It was a note he had hurriedly written because he couldn’t attend her birthday party. It read, “My apologies. Love, Dad.” The expensive gift of jewelry he had left with the note was nowhere to be seen. “Why,” he asked his daughter “is this worthless piece of paper hanging on the wall?” “Because,” his daughter replied, “it’s the only thing I have that is really from you.” The most sacred of Lakota spiritual practices is the Wiwanyang Wacipi or the “looking at the sun and dancing, more popularly known as the Sun Dance. The ceremony is a symbolic act of sacrifice. The participants pierce their upper chest in two places and skewers made of bone are inserted. To the skewers is attached a cord that is tied to a central pole. The participants pull the cord as they dance, they tear their flesh doing so. Would not recommend doing this to be more like the Lakota but starting with ceremonies and learning what they

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