Lakota Religion Prayer Tradition

This entry records that Lakota religion, the spiritual tradition of the Lakota people of the northern Great Plains, structures prayer around a recognized set of sacred ceremonies, including the sweat lodge, the vision quest, and the sun dance, among others, understood within Lakota tradition as gifts given by White Buffalo Calf Woman, a central figure in Lakota sacred narrative, without presenting the specific prayers, songs or ceremonial protocols associated with these rites here.

Lakota religious leaders and ceremonial specialists, including recognized medicine people who undergo lengthy training and hold specific ceremonial responsibility within their communities, have in various contexts explicitly and publicly objected to the commercial appropriation and unauthorized teaching of Lakota ceremony by unaffiliated individuals and organizations, a documented pattern of concern this entry takes as directly relevant guidance for how a general reference source should treat this material. Consistent with that concern, this entry limits itself to noting that Lakota religion possesses a rich, specific prayer and ceremonial tradition rather than describing or summarizing its actual liturgical content.

The Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin, generally translated as something like 'all my relatives' or 'we are all related,' has become widely known outside Lakota communities, sometimes used in outside contexts, including certain non-Native new age and wellness settings, in ways Lakota religious leaders and scholars have specifically criticized as detached from its actual meaning and ceremonial context within Lakota prayer and worldview. This pattern, a specific piece of ceremonial language becoming disconnected from its source community and reused in simplified or altered form by outsiders, is precisely the kind of concern that has led many Native communities, Lakota included, to be publicly explicit about wanting outside sources to describe rather than reproduce or repurpose their prayer language.

Lakota religion remains an actively practiced living tradition today, maintained by ceremonial leaders and communities primarily on and around Lakota reservations in South Dakota and neighboring states, alongside varying degrees of engagement with Christianity introduced through historical missionary activity, and questions of religious practice, revival and continuity remain actively discussed within Lakota communities themselves rather than settled matters an outside reference source could accurately summarize.