The National Congress of American Indians reveals that 0.9% of the United States population identifies themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native alone, meaning not with a combination of another race. This equals about 2.9 million people.

While the population may seem scarce, the heart and beauty of Native American traditions live on through their heirs. Keep reading and discover five important traditions and what makes them so special.

1. Healing Rituals

The Native American community often held symbolic ceremonies and healing rituals to bring their people into harmony with their tribe, their environment, and themselves. A ceremony should help groups return to harmony. Usually, large ceremonies were not for individual healing.

Native American ceremonies like these vary tremendously from tribe to tribe. Tribes like the Navajo and Sioux would use a sacred hoop, and a medicine wheel, and would sing and dance. This could last for days.

You can read more about another Navajo tradition in this article.

2. Green Corn Festivals

The Eastern Woodland and Southeastern tribes would practice this kind of Native American celebrations and religious ceremonies. Tribes like the Cherokee, Creek, Iroquois, Seminole, and Yuchi would hold this Native American tradition in the late summer. It would coincide with the ripening of the corn crop.

This ceremony would last for three days, during which the people would feast, fast, dance, and hold religious observations. While each tribe would host different activities, they would have one common part of the tradition, which is that they could not eat corn until after they gave the Great Spirit proper thanks. Tribal members would give thanks for many things besides the corn, such as the sun, rain, and a bountiful harvest.

3. Death Ceremonies

Another of the Native American rituals is that they would celebrate death. They believed that while the journey of life has ended on Earth, the start of life would begin in the Spirit World.

Many tribes believe that the journey to the Spirit World could be long. Therefore, Native Americans perform an afterlife ritual to be sure that spirits would not stay and roam the Earth.

4. Pow-Wows

This is one of the most popular traditions because it has a relatively modern term. The term pow-wow actually comes from powwaw, a Narragansett word, which means spiritual leader. The closest word in English that would be a pow-wow is meeting.

A pow-wow describes a gathering, like a fair, a feast, a festival, a celebration, and similar.

5. Vision Quests

In the Native American community, older children often take this practice prior to puberty. It was how they were to find their life’s direction. It would differ between tribes, the length it would take, their intensity, and the precise age of the child.

Vision quests were supernatural experiences. The individual taking on the quest is to interact with a guardian spirit. This would usually be an animal that would offer advice or protection.

Native American Traditions

We love celebrating people and their heritage, which is why we are excited to bring you articles like this one. Native American traditions are iconic and we must remember them for all time.

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