Apache girl performing Sun Rise Dance

An Apache girl and her helper, both dressed in buckskin clothes, dance at the girl's Sunrise Dance, a first menstruation rite, on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Arizona, USA. The girl holds a cane that symbolises longevity. The Sunrise Dance is supposed to prepare the girl for adulthood and to give her a long and healthy life without material wants.The ceremony is also an enactment of the Apache creation myth and during the rites the girl ’becomes‘ Changing Woman, a mythical female figure, and comes into possession of her healing powers.

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Filename: 4533.jpg
Copyright: Copyright © 2004 Anders Ryman. All rights reserved.
Image Size: 3661x5467 / 18.9MB; American Southwest Apache Arizona Changing Woman Coming of Age Dancing Females Girls Life Cycle Ritual Native Americans Native North Americans North America Religion Rite de Passage Rite of Passage San Carlos Indian Reservation Sunrise Dance USA United States of America Vertical adulthood animal hide bell bells buck-skin buckskin cane ceremony cultural and ethnic dress dawn daybreak decorated decorations eagle feathers ethnic clothing ethnic minority first menstruation fringed fringes indigenous people life cycle ceremony longevity maturity morning native-americans ornament puberty rite religious skin sun up sunrise sunrises sunshine teenage girl two persons yellow
Contained in galleries: Apache sunrise dance, USA

An Apache girl and her helper, both dressed in buckskin clothes, dance at the girl's Sunrise Dance, a first menstruation rite, on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Arizona, USA. The girl holds a cane that symbolises longevity. The Sunrise Dance is supposed to prepare the girl for adulthood and to give her a long and healthy life without material wants.The ceremony is also an enactment of the Apache creation myth and during the rites the girl ’becomes‘ Changing Woman, a mythical female figure, and comes into possession of her healing powers.