presumed audience: NUR (or Pre-med or PA students) 300 level-ish
READ
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WATCH
The Sacred Sundance — 69 minutes
Indigenous-made. Brian J. Francis is a Mi'kmaq filmmaker from Elsipogtog First Nation.
The film follows the transmission of the Sundance from Blackfoot ceremonial knowledge to Mi'kmaq communities. It includes firsthand testimony about fasting, piercing, sacrifice, prayer, illness, addiction, and healing. One participant describes undertaking the Sundance on behalf of two critically ill children.
The ceremony itself is not filmed.
Circle of the Sun — 30 minutes
Actual Sundance footage. Filmed at a 1956 Káínaa (Blood Tribe) gathering in Alberta, with the community's permission.
Features Pete Standing Alone, a Káínaa man who narrates aspects of the experience. It also shows everyday community life and the tension between inherited traditions and changing circumstances.
Directed by a non-Indigenous filmmaker, and its 1960 framing is iffy af.
CLINICALLY TRANSCRIBE AND ILLUSTRATE IT
Write a detailed anatomical description of the Sundance physical process. Include at least one detailed anatomy illustration, parts correctly labeled (see Anatomy: A Coloring Book for examples if you're unfamiliar—just google it).
WRITE IT
To the best of your ability, describe how the process would physically feel. 300 words.
This is not clinical transcription. Use sentences and plain English and feelings.
REREAD
FINAL QUESTION
How can everyday language (fiction and non) tell truths about wound survival that clinical language alone cannot?
or
OPTIONAL REFLECTION
The novel talks a lot about what resonates. What resonates with you differently now, if anything? Do you ever kill yourself a little so you don't kill yourself a lot?*
*Consider the question figuratively, not as an instruction to injure yourself.
