An Apache girl's Sunrise Dance

An Apache girl is massaged by her godmother during her Sunrise Dance, a first menstruation rite, on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, USA. Behind the girl and the godmother the medicine man and his assistants sing and beat their drums. The Sunrise Dance is supposed to prepare the girl for adulthood and to give her a long and healthy life without material wants, and the purpose of the massage is to shape the girl into a grown woman with a strong body. The rite 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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Copyright: Copyright © 2004 Anders Ryman. All rights reserved.
Image Size: 3688x5587 / 12.9MB; American Indian American Indians American Southwest Apache Arizona Changing Woman Dancing Native Americans Native North Americans North America Outdoors Religion Rite of Passage San Carlos Indian Reservation Sunrise Dance USA United States of America Vertical adulthood animal hide bending buck-skin buckskin camp dress ceremony cultural and ethnic dress dawn daybreak decorated decorations drums eagle feathers ethnic clothing ethnic group ethnic minority first menstruation fringed fringes girl hats indigenous people jeans life cycle ceremony longevity lying down massage maturity medicine man medicine-man minority morning music music instrument musical instrument musical instruments musician native-americans ornament outside puberty rite quilt religious shirts skin skirts small group of people sun up sunrise sunrises sunshine teenage girl woman
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An Apache girl is massaged by her godmother during her Sunrise Dance, a first menstruation rite, on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, USA. Behind the girl and the godmother the medicine man and his assistants sing and beat their drums. The Sunrise Dance is supposed to prepare the girl for adulthood and to give her a long and healthy life without material wants, and the purpose of the massage is to shape the girl into a grown woman with a strong body. The rite 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.