In January, 2001, The Emory MARIAL Center hosted a visit from Mr. Harold (Vance) Littlebird, a "ceremonial man" from the Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana. The visit was arranged with the help of John Bing, a graduate student in Emory’s Department of Anthropology who has been conducting research on the Cheyenne Reservation for several years, and who introduced us to his friend Harold Vance Littlebird.

Vance came from Montana to tell us about the traditional uses of ritual on the Cheyenne Reservation and to outline his plans and hopes for using traditional Cheyenne rituals such as dance societies and the sweat lodge to help redirect Cheyenne youth who have problems with alcohol and drug use.

To help us understand the power of the sweat lodge John and Vance constructed a sweat lodge in the backyard of MARIAL director Bradd Shore in Marietta, and enabled a group of Emory faculty and students to experience this ritual on a Sunday afternoon in January.

The pictures speak for themselves, suggesting how the combination of intense physical stress, prayer and song can produce a sense of healing at once physical, psychological and spiritual.

While this ancient American ritual of the sweat lodge is far removed from the typical middle-class rituals MARIAL studies, it reminds us both of the power of ritual to heal and forge community and that the notion of "Myth and Ritual in American Life" encompasses the beliefs and practices of many diverse groups.

To illuminate this venerable Native American ritual tradition, we have reproduced not only the photographs from our own suburban sweat lodge, but have reproduced from the internet a number of informative descriptions and evocations of the traditional sweat lodge.