Indian Sweat Lodge Ceremony

Chief Yellowtail covers a few aspects of the construction of a sweat lodge, but focuses on the Sweat Lodge Ceremony itself and its purpose of purification. The clip finishes with a description of the spiritual benefit a participant should realize, as a kind of rebirth: “We can reemerge from the sweat lodge at the end of the ceremony as new men who have been shown the light of the wisdom of our spiritual heritage for the first time. This allows us to participate in all of our daily tasks with the fresh remembrance of our position on the Earth and our continuous obligation to walk on this Earth in accordance with the sacred ways.”

The clip is a remastered segment from the World Wisdom 2-DVD set “Native Spirit and The Sun Dance Way”, originally released in 2007.