Of all the ritual instruments used among Indigenous
practitioners, the sacred Pipe remains foremost. The sacred
Pipe thus stands as the supreme indicator of the ritual life
of Indigenous peoples here. It is the absolute guarantor,
equal in position to the use of the Bible in Canadian legal
testimony. Yet ritual artifacts may not indicate how
powerful Ritual Law applies in any given case, nor how
powerful the ritual instrument. Paper, in his Offering
Smoke on the Pipe in pan-Indian rituals, tried to study
the role that collected and museum artifact pipes played in
the past, based on criteria he could establish from various
sources, and the written explanations that went with them.
His work was largely frustrating. He summarized these
criteria into four, the last of which is important to us.
Clearly the limitations of his study are instructive:
Fourth, the ritual use. This is the most difficult
criterion of all and yet the most important. In some cases
the determination is clear; for example, where the pipe is
in sacred bundles or definitely associated with other ritual
objects, or where there is precise ethnographic data about
ritual use. In all other cases, the determination must be
made by inference. One means is to note significant symbolic
decoration; for example, a red ochre coating, the trachea or
lifeline design, or suspended human scalps or an appropriate
number of eagle feathers. These aspects of the artifact,
combined with other data, may lead to varying probabilities
of the ritual use of the artifact. Association with historic
events, such as councils or adoption rituals, may also be of
significance.
Of the thousands of pipes studied, exceedingly few met
all four criteria. Examples were selected by their value to
the study even with limited data. For example, when only one
pipe was available for a particular culture, it was included
in the study if at least one of the four items of data was
known. However, since the focus was on ritual, ritual use
was normally the determining factor for inclusion in the
database. Fewer than two percent of the pipes studied met
this criterion. In total, including pipes known through
illustrations, ritual use could be listed as definite or
almost definite for 103 pipes and probable for another 54.
It is to be understood that many more were undoubtedly used
ritually, but there were no specific indicators. On the
other hand, the majority of pipes in the collections,
especially those with a large number of more recently
acquired pipes, were manufactured at Pipestone, Minnesota
for the tourist trade. (p.117)
From the rigorous perspective of the specialist, then,
the ritual role and validation of the Indigenous pipes in
North America is far from being clear. This suggests that,
without the ritual context of these pipes, Canadians have no
way of knowing their real use, their perceived power, or
their place in Indigenous consciousness. This suggests that
the Canadian public's awareness of the role and position of
one such crucial element of Indigenous spirituality, and
certainly one of the centerpieces of Nature's Laws from the
Indigenous perspective cannot rely upon current knowledge.
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