Talk:Wocekiye

Further edits
I'm going to go ahead and leave further work on this page to people who know better than I do. Bobbotronica (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I learned a lot from this page, but I have a lot of issues with some of the content. These issues are academic, and are the result of disagreements amongst scholars. Here, in this article, the Wakan Tanka Waste and the Wakan Tanka Sica have been mixed together in the sixteen. According to Walker, the sixteen Wakan Tanka Waste are considered to be the benevolent gods or spirits. The Wakan Tanka Sica are malevolent, hostile, or indifferent gods or spirits. According to Walker, Waziya, Wakanka, Unk and Gnaski are not benevolent and not a part of Wakan Tanka Waste. They are Wakan Tanka Sica (which is subordinate to Wakan Tanka.) Nowhere in Walker is Wakan Tanka equal to the Christian God and nowhere is Jesus mentioned. (Fools Crow does share that he believes that Wakan Tanka is equivalent to the Christian God and Tunkasila is the Son of God - Jesus.) Walker relates that the Lakota Four Parts of the Soul - niya, nagi, nagila and sicun are the last four of the sixteen Wakan Tanka Waste. Wohpe, or the Divine Feminine replaces Unk here. The Buffalo and Bear spirit are also included in the sixteen. The sixteen are generally thought to look like this, after Walker, in this order:

The sixteen Wakan Tankas, or the Tobtób Kį are: Wí — Sun Táku Škąšką — Motion, Sky (Great Spirit or Tunkasila) Makʿa — Earth Inyą — Stone Hąwí — Moon Tʿaté — Wind Woȟpe — the Divine Feminine Wakiyą — Thunder Beings Tʿatʿąka — Buffalo Hunųpa — Bear Tʿatúye Tópa — the Four Winds/Directions Yumní — the Whirlwind Niya — spirit Naǧi — ghost Naǧila — Spirit-like Šicų — spiritual potency Walker, J. R. 1917. “The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota.” In American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers 16 (2): 51– 221.

Posthumus, David C. 2018. "All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief and Ritual." The University of Nebraska Press and the American Philosophical Society.

The word wacekiye means more than "prayer." That definition was applied by early religious missionaries. The word is much more complex and nuanced, as much of the Lakota language is. The word means "to address a relative, and to pray." It includes the Lakota word for cry, so the connotation is that one is crying to a relative, and beseeching them to "reach their arms down and hold me in their loving embrace." Asking for a hug, as one makes one's request for help. The source for this insight is Albert White Hat in two publications, one in 1999 and another in 2012. White Hat, Albert. 1999. "Reading and Writing the Lakota Language = Lak̇ot̄a Iyap̄i Un̳ Wowap̄i Nahan̳ Yawap̄i." Edited by Jael Kampfe. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

—. 2012. "Life’s Journey— Zuya: Oral Teachings from Rosebud." Edited by John Cunningham. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Shootingstar (talk) 09:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I decided to make an attempt to clean this article up. I started with the beginning introduction (by clarifying the definition somewhat) and then replacing the list of the sixteen benevolent Wakan Tankas, based on the Walker sources. I stopped there. That means that some of the non-benevolent Wakan Sicas are now left out, like Unk and Wazi, but these can be added back in below in the "other spirits" section. Shootingstar (talk) 15:21, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I did a bit more clean-up by adding a second group of Wakan Tankas, called the Wakan Tanka Sica. These are malevolent or indifferent gods or spirits. Where this created redundancies I eliminated those. Also, I did a couple of minor edits. For example, Iya is not the same thing as Waziya. And I changed "peace pipe" to "sacred pipe." It might be good to limit the scope of this article only to the Walker material (and its derivatives). This would eliminate the references to other tribe's beliefs, which sometimes seem superfluous and beyond the scope of this article. Shootingstar (talk) 08:06, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I cleaned it up a bit more. I agree that the other tribes' beliefs didn't belong in this article and weren't sourced so I removed them. I think it is fine to include any other Lakota or Dakota beliefs that Walker didn't include in his work, but this article shouldn't cover the belief systems of other tribes. oncamera   (talk page)  17:50, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

References and Undue Weight
The #2 Reference is incomplete and incorrect. The book is actually entitled, "Lakota Belief and Ritual" and is authored by James R. Walker and edited by Jahner and DeMallie. This source does not support the "pantheon" described. Shootingstar (talk) 13:41, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this Walker, J. R. Walker even notable / credible enough to use as a source? I'm seeing a lot of problems here. I don't think we should have an entire creation myth sourced only to this settler, with or without OR commentary inserted. I'm tempted to just cut the section. Additionally, much of this article is just dicdefs. I already cut a whole bunch of inaccurate, non-Native lens, problematic stuff. I'm just not sure this can be saved.... - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 22:54, 12 March 2023 (UTC)


 * James Walker is highly respected as a source and the Dakota star knowledge was written by Dakota astronomer Jim Rock. I don't think you should have removed the star map source at all. And Walker is fine for some parts. The creation story can be cut, I can write one a condensed one later featuring numerous Lakota or Dakota sources besides just Walker published work.
 * oncamera (talk page) 01:38, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess the question is whether people added all the inaccuracies after the sources were there, or whether the misinformation is in those books. The claim about Walker's unique inside knowledge paired with the things he has wrong resulted in cognitive dissonance that seemed best resolved by removal. The language about him seemed both promotional and editorial and not relevant to the article. With the lists, the additions aren't sourced individually, but in a group at the very end; those need better attribution if they're to stay. The Star Maps book didn't include publication data. I looked it up and it, and the authors' other book on another culture - both look to be self-published: https://www.nativeskywatchers.com/about.html - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 20:11, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * He makes an autobiographical statement in the book about how he learned these practices. It doesn't need to be included the article, but it's not exactly "misinformation" since the source is Walker himself. However, since that book was published, Raymond J. DeMallie went back to Walker's original notes and published the works in Lakota Society which "presents the primary accounts of Walker's informants and his syntheses dealing with the organization of camps and bands, kinship systems, beliefs, ceremonies, hunting, warfare, and methods of measuring time" which credits the individual Lakota holymen with the information each one presents. I'll work on rewriting the article sections using updated books.  oncamera  (talk page) 21:53, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Recent Revert and the State of this Article
Hello User:Oncamera. I wanted to query your recent reversion of my (quite substantial) changes to the article. I added information that was cited to top quality Reliable Sources and that was about wocekiye specifically. I also removed the information in this article that is often tangential to wocekiye, namely lists of wakan beings and sections which are little more than bullet points of trivia about Lakota religion. As this sort of information is already covered at the Lakota religion article, why have it here as well?

- as you have been active on this article and this talk page recently, you may also be interested in weighing in. If we cannot find some agreement here then perhaps we could go to a WP:Request for Comment ? Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:23, 10 August 2023 (UTC)


 * It would be good to have additional sourcing. Another question to ask is if this needs to be its own article. Should we consider making it a subsection in Lakota religion? What do you think, ?, I'd prefer to avoid a general RfC, as most WP editors tend to be unfamiliar with Native topics, and we wind up spending so much time getting them up to speed in order for them to even be able to evaluate the situation. I think it's vastly preferable to seek input from The Indigenous Wikiproject first, if you want more eyes. - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 20:19, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Technically, wocekiye can refer to those who follow just the traditional ways but also those who mix some version of Christianity into their prayers. The article could be written in a way that reflects that. They refer to the Christian god by the same name as the traditional Wakan Tanka, but add in Christian elements. Many of the first Dakota/Lakota printing presses were to print Dakota Christian prayer books which are called wocekiye odowan (prayer hymns). I don't think the articles should be necessarily merged due unique history of prayer within the tribal communities. The article could be written to include both the traditional stuff and the Dakota/Lakota-ified Christian history. oncamera  (talk page) 21:38, 10 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you to you both for your responses. At present, I don't think the information in the article is sufficient to warrant the article's continued existence (we have very little information on wocekiye itself in the article). However, I think that Oncamera's suggestion of using this article to discuss approaches to wocekiye in both Lakota (traditional) religion and Lakota Christianity is a good one and offers a useful framework for improvement.


 * Might I suggest that, as a starting place, we get rid of the information in this article that is not directly related to wocekiye. "Common beliefs" is nothing but a trivia section right now, and "Types of medicine and holy people" and "Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka" do not deal with wocekiye either. All of these issues are better dealt with in more appropriate articles anyway, such as Lakota religion and List of Lakota deities. Is there any strong opposition to this course of action? Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:26, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Those types of medicine men use the pipe/wocekiye as part of their work. Also the wocekiye of using pipe came from White Buffalo Calf, who is part of the creation story of Wakhan Thanka. I don't know how you would even talk about prayer without including those. They could be written in a way that the connection stays closer to the topic instead, so I don't think they should be removed entirely as "unrelated". oncamera  (talk page) 14:29, 11 August 2023 (UTC)