The 1870 Ghost Dance at the Walker River Reservation: A Reconstruction

Ethnohistory ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hittman
Keyword(s):  
Ghost Dance ◽  
Walker River

The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rani-Henrik Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Ghost Dance

Ghost Dancing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kélina Gotman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
The Government ◽  
Wasted Energy ◽  
The U.S

Native American dancers in the 1890s rebelling against the U.S. government’s failure to uphold treaties protecting land rights and rations were accused of fomenting a dancing ‘craze’. Their dancing—which hoped for a renewal of Native life—was subject to intense government scrutiny and panic. The government anthropologist James Mooney, in participant observation and fieldwork, described it as a religious ecstasy like St. Vitus’s dance. The Ghost Dance movement escalated with the proliferation of reports, telegraphs, and letters circulating via Washington, DC. Although romantically described as ‘geognosic’—nearly mineral—ancestors of the whites, Native rebels in the Plains were told to stop dancing so they could work and thus modernize; their dancing was deemed excessive, wasteful, and unproductive. The government’s belligerently declared state of exception—effectively cultural war—was countered by one that they performed ecstatically. ‘Wasted’ energy, dancers maintained, trumped dollarization—the hollow ‘use value’ of capitalist biopower.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document