Mechanical pencil

Dancing through Dérive.

There is a Native American right of passage practiced in many tribes, the Arapaho, Arikara, Asbinboine, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros, Ventre, Hidutsa, Sioux, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibway, Sarasi, Omaha, Ponca, Ute, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Blackfoot. It is referred to as the “Sun Dance”. Although the actual ritual differs from tribe to tribe, the basics remain pretty much the same. A forked tree was scouted by men who held prominence with the tribe. It was chopped down with no regard or reverence, treated like a fallen enemy. An offering was them placed in the fork. The elder women would strip the brances. Right as the sun would come up the next morning; the warriors would symbolically attack it, thrusting it with arrows. After this act, the sun dance lodge was erected out of this tree, this quasi fallen enemy. There is a lot of spirituality that goes into the erection of the lodge, short of me writing a novel about it, I urge you to research.

Each one of the young men dancing would be presented to the Medicine Man of the tribe, who took between his thumb and forefinger a fold of the loose skin of the breast—and then ran a very narrow-bladed or sharp knife through the skin—a stronger skewer of bone, about the size of a carpenter's pencil was inserted. This was tied to a long skin rope fastened, at its other extremity, to the top of the sun-pole in the center of the arena. The whole object of the devotee is to break loose from these fetters. To liberate himself he must tear the skewers through the skin, a horrible task that even with the most resolute may require many hours of torture. ...

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