Sacred Pipe

The sacred pipe, known by many specific names across the Great Plains nations that hold it, is used in prayer across a number of Indigenous North American traditions, most extensively documented among Lakota and related Plains communities, with a bowl commonly carved from pipestone, a soft red stone, and a separate wooden stem, the two kept apart except during actual use, when they are joined for the ceremony and separated again afterward.

Walker's documentation of Lakota belief and ritual records that much of the pipestone used across a wide area of the Plains has traditionally been quarried from a specific site now within Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota, a location understood by many Plains nations as sacred in its own right and historically treated, even among groups that were otherwise in conflict, as neutral ground where quarrying for pipe material could proceed under a form of shared truce. Materials, construction and specific form vary considerably by nation, so no single description of the pipe applies uniformly across every tradition that holds one. A completed pipe is treated with particular care and respect even when not in active ceremonial use, generally wrapped and stored rather than displayed casually, reflecting its standing as a working sacred implement rather than as decorative craft.

The ceremonies in which the sacred pipe is used, who may carry a pipe, how one is obtained and passed down, and what the pipe's use is understood to accomplish are matters of closed, community held religious knowledge, transmitted through recognised pipe carriers and ceremonial elders within specific nations rather than published as general instruction, and this entry accordingly describes the object at a public, scholarly level without detailing ceremonial procedure or spiritual teaching that belongs to the traditions themselves.

In 1993 a formal Lakota gathering issued the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality, explicitly naming the pipe and pipe ceremony among the sacred elements that outside individuals and organisations had been commercialising or performing without authority, a documented statement of the real and ongoing concern Plains nations hold about their sacred practice being reconstructed or sold by people outside the tradition. The pipe remains a living, actively used sacred object among the nations that hold this practice today, and its protected status is treated here as a fact to be respected rather than a gap to be filled in with outside speculation.