Lakota religion is organised around wakan, a quality of power or mystery, and Wakan Tanka, usually rendered the great mystery, which is better understood as the totality of the wakan beings than as a single person. The materials gathered by James Walker from Oglala holy men at Pine Ridge in the early twentieth century, later edited by Raymond DeMallie and Elaine Jahner, remain the fullest record of that theology, and they are also a record of particular men deciding what to entrust to an outsider.
The White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the sacred pipe and, with it, the ceremonies. The account Black Elk gave to Joseph Epes Brown names seven rites, among them the sweat lodge, the crying for a vision, the sun dance, the making of relatives and the keeping of the soul. The atlas names them and does not set out their procedure, and that refusal is the tradition's own rather than the atlas's caution. Lakota authorities have stated repeatedly that these ceremonies are not available to be performed by outsiders or taught for a fee.
The Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality, adopted at the fifth Lakota Summit in 1993, is the formal statement of that position. It names the selling of ceremonies as theft, and it is a live document rather than a historical one.