Distinctly Montana Magazine

joe Shelton After the last round of the sweat. I hear laughing and conversation. Relaxing after a sweat Erik Peterson In Montana, the traditional sweat lodge is vividly alive. Photo courtesy of Gallatin Pioneer Museum Dr. Shane Doyle, Professor of Native American Studies at Montana State University, with the water that will be poured on the hot stones. 58 One reason is because the ways are powerful and can come with risk and responsibility. For example, often when someone shows up to a sweat and they don't know much about how information is received, they often ask a lot of questions about things... They don't realize that someone has sacrificed a great deal to learn things. If you are going to approach someone like Doyle to ask him for information, it is best to present a sacred gift like some tobacco, which symbolizes your respect for the pains that person took in getting that knowledge himself." Mr. Doyle told me that the Crow sweats are segregated by sex, with the men bathing before the women. The Lakota sweat lodge has the rock pit in the center of the lodge, while the Crow have it offset, near the entrance. Some use sacred foods in the sweat, like fish or berries. Outside of Montana, and away from Plains Indians, the variations are even greater. While the Crow tradition has been openly performed for decades, and a modern sweat lodge has been maintained on the site outside of Bozeman since the 1960s, some other tribes had to pursue the legal right to practice the sweat lodge, finally winning the right in the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act of 1978. Since then the sweat lodge has been practiced widely again by Native Americans and non-natives who seek something sacred, something restorative in the process. Anyone interested in trying a sweat lodge experience is reminded to keep the ceremonial and spiritual component in mind. The sweat lodge is to be respected. It is also a balance of heat, water, and rocks, which must be maintained correctly, and it is not without danger. If someone in a ceremony put on by Mr. Doyle begins to get too hot, he says, they simply "say door and someone will open the flap, or else he can go outside. We are very careful to not make it too hot for newcomers, and to keep the rounds short. The bottom line is it should be used for healing. It is easy to disrespect." When performed properly in the traditional way Doyle says that "sometimes the rocks get really hot and start sizzling. The rocks, which we call the Grandfathers because they are so old, are talking to you. And the water and the heat are what cleanse you. With prayers, all these things combine to make a healing ceremony." At about sunset on a Wednesday afternoon, I arrive at the lodge too late to take part but just in time to find Shayne Doyle and some Native American friends toweling off after the last round of the sweat. I hear laughing and conversation as I approach. One of the men is a young Sioux, and says that this is his first sweat outside of his grandfather's lodge. Another jokes that Packers fans sit on one side of the lodge, and the Viking fans on the other. "Let me put away my belly before you take my picture", says a bigger man with a smile. There is something wonderful in this moment, a mix of the sacred and the new, but which confirms what Doyle had told me the day before: that the traditional sweat lodge, by being about healing, must necessarily be about community, too. distinctly montana • winter 2014

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