The red road is a pan-Indian concept of the right path of life, as inspired by some of the beliefs found in a variety of Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 spiritual teachings. Native American's spiritual teachings are diverse, and this concept is, in some form or another, found in all traditions.

Expressions

The Red Road is how many modern indigenous people refer to their practice of ancient indigenous spirituality. Upon hearing the term the Red Road many people mistakenly think the Red Road refers to the red race. This is not the case, the Red Road refers to the color of blood, which is the same for humans as for all animals. Blood is sacred because it carries the treasure of our genetic code, which goes all the way back to the beginning of life. This is why indigenous spirituality refers to all life as "our relations." When people hear an indigenous person pray or speak, and they refer to "our cousins the fourlegged," or "our cousins the winged," or "our cousins the insects," or "our cousins who live in the waters of the world," they may think it quaint or simple, but it is in fact scientific. We have more in common with our pets, or plants in our yards, than we do with our flatscreen TV's or computers. All life is truly related.

The Red Road also refers to our individual lives, the time that we spend on our Mother Earth, starting with our birth and ending with our death. In indigenous spirituality, our life here on Mother Earth is our greatest gift from the Great Mystery. To truly appreciate and understand this gift we must understand and accept our mortality. To face your death is to understand that some day the sun will rise, and you will not be here to see it. You are mortal, your time here is finite. Even though we live and think as if we were immortal, we are not. By facing our mortality, we can begin to appreciate what a precious gift life is. Each sunrise is an opportunity for a new start, each day an adventure, where no one knows what will happen tomorrow.

Native spirituality is all about living in the here and now. You cannot change the past and the future is a mystery. To truly be on a path with heart a spiritual warrior on the Red Road makes the most of each hour, minute, and second of his life. He realizes what a marvelous and mysterious place the world is, where each individual can be aware and interact with this multi-dimensional universe, to realize that the has his own individual relationship with the whole and how that whole has a relationship with the individual. Each person has a cosmic relationship with the earth, the moon, the sun, the universe and all it contains. The body of the Great Mystery is the universe, and you are inside that body, you are a part of that body.

To understand native social political structure one must understand native participatory democracy. The indigenous people of this hemisphere, North and South, East and West, practiced a true form of democracy, a democracy without tyranny of the majority, where your individual rights never had to be compromised. Indigenous councils were the basic social political instrument used by indigenous peoples, not only to make all immediate and long term decisions, but they also served as a conflict resolution and judicial system. Understanding the rules, form and structure of the Council will not only help one to understand how it works, but how its actual form and structure actually fosters and insures the principle of equality and equal rights.
The Council is a ceremony and like all indigenous ceremony it can last for days. A sacred fire may be lit and maintained for the duration of the Council. Sweat lodge ceremonies may be performed before and after the council. This is an example of how the Red Road is a holistic way of life which doesn't separate the political from the spiritual. The energy and the form of the Council is circular. Each person, before they enter into sacred circle, is smudged, not only for purification, but also to open up their minds and their hearts so they are truly able to hear what is said in Council. Each participant tries to become more receptive to each other's words, thoughts and feelings by clearing their minds. Please remember that the particular details for any ceremony like the directions, people and objects move, colors that represent, for example, the four directions, can be the same or different for any nation, tribe, or people of this hemisphere. What is astonishing is the basic principles and the form of the Council were so similar for all the peoples of this hemisphere. After the participant is smudged they usually enter the Council Circle clockwise to take their positions in the Council Circle.

The mechanics of the Council are simple and direct. The elder or the medicine person would begin by holding a sacred object or talking stick. Only the person who had the sacred object could speak. There was no time limit, each person could take as much time as they felt was necessary. Conversely, if you do not want to speak, you have no obligation to do so. You simply had to pass the sacred object to the next person in the sacred circle. This was repeated until there was consensus by all the members of the council on a solution or a way forward. By seeking consensus there was no tyranny of the majority. The majority could not force a minority or for that matter, an individual to do anything that they did not want to. Each and every decision coming out of Council had to take into consideration how that decision would affect seven generations into the future. This simple rule is an example of how native participatory democracy insures the rights and the futures of children. Native societies did not just give lip service to children's rights. They have an overriding principle, law if you will, that protected the rights and futures of their children, without exception.
Concern for the cost of severing one's relationship with the earth has been echoed by many modern, leading Western thinkers such as Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

 and Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...

, as well as the environmental movement

Environmental movement

The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....

. Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement...

 wrote:

"The first and great difference between primitive religious thought and the world religions ... is that primitive peoples maintain an air of mystery through their bond with nature; the world religions sever the relationship and attempt to establish a new, more comprehensible one."

Black Elk

Black Elk

Heȟáka Sápa was a famous Wičháša Wakȟáŋ of the Oglala Lakota . He was Heyoka and a second cousin of Crazy Horse.-Life:...

, a widely known medicine man

Medicine man

"Medicine man" or "Medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples...

 of the Oglala Lakota (1863–1950), believed he had an obligation to "help to bring my people back into the sacred hoop, that they might again walk the red road in a sacred manner pleasing to the powers of the universe that are one power". His account of his life was told by John G. Neihardt in Black Elk Speaks

Black Elk Speaks

Black Elk Speaks is a 1932 book by John G. Neihardt, an American poet and writer, who relates the story and spirituality of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux medicine man or shaman. It was based on conversations by Black Elk with the author and translated from Lakota into English by Black Elk's son, Ben...

, first published in 1932.

"Hear me, four quarters of the world--a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

Great Spirit

Great Spirit

The Great Spirit, also called Wakan Tanka among the Sioux, the Creator or the Great Maker in English, and Gitchi Manitou in Algonquian, is a conception of a supreme being prevalent among some Native American and First Nations cultures...

, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the wind and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

This is my prayer; hear me!"

- "Black Elk's Prayer for All Life"

Lone Man (Isna la-wica), a late 19th century leader of the Teton Sioux, said, "I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself."

See also

• Blessing Way
• Indigenous decolonization
  Indigenous decolonization
  Indigenous Decolonization is a process that Indigenous people whose communities were grossly affected by colonial expansion, genocide and cultural assimilation may go through in understanding the history of their colonization and rediscovering their ancestral traditions and cultural values...
  
  
• Midewiwin
  Midewiwin
  The Midewiwin or the Grand Medicine Society is a secretive religion of the aboriginal groups of the Maritimes, New England and Great Lakes regions in North America. Its practitioners are called Midew and the practices of Midewiwin referred to as Mide...
  
  
• Medicine wheel
  Medicine wheel
  Medicine wheels, or sacred hoops, were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground. Most medicine wheels follow the basic pattern of having a center of stone, and surrounding that is an outer ring of stones with "spokes", or lines of rocks radiating from the center...
  
  
• Native American Church
  Native American Church
  Native American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States...
  
  
• Native American Spirituality Movements
  Native American Spirituality Movements
  The encounter of the Native American cultures with the European and African civilizations changed drastically their ways of life and thought. Many syncretic and revitalization movements emerged....
  
  
• Sweat lodge
  Sweat lodge
  The sweat lodge is a ceremonial sauna and is an important event in some North American First Nations or Native American cultures...
  
  

External links

• "The Red Road To Sobriety", Contemporary Native American Sobriety Movement]
• Sacred Sites of the United States