Lakota Culture

Well, shaman is one of those weird words. It entered German, and later English, in a discredited school of anthropology we now associate with Lewis Henry Morgan, stages of development. That’s also why, e.g. the Indians in the old Westerns seem to speak Tok Pisin for no reason. Okay, that our of the way, there are also often multiple religious or ceremonial offices, some of which involve androgyny and/or refusing sex with women. An aside: In Lakota culture, sex with women is seen as draining. (And some men avoid it due to bad experiences. In the old days, curious girls were known to make trampolines out of blankets, lure a boy into the blanket, and just keep bouncing him until his belt came undone, leaving him naked and erect for the world to see. Many boys felt violated, and some never returned to women, even for sex and marriage.) We specifically avoid sex with women for certain ceremonies, and an inipi (sweat lodge) one thing men are being purified of is a woman’s touch. The men will still be wičaša (a sexually experienced or married man) rather than khoškalaka (a man who, while having experienced a voice change or ejaculation, has no sexual experience and is unmarried), but they’re now able to take part in other. A.NoN