This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

A lot of people today are uneasy about how the world is going — and what it all might mean to them personally.

Teetering economies, wars, terrorism, climate change, even technology all threaten the status quo. How do we deal with these changes? I leave you to ponder that and take you to the 1800s, when the native people of the Great Basin turned to "Ghost Dancing" as a solution to their own drastically changing world.

The arrival of Anglo-Americans had turned life upside for American Indians. But in the 1870s, a Paiute named Wodziwob told his people about the Ghost Dance — a ritual based on the traditional round dance. This dance, he said, could transform the earth into a paradise, get rid of Anglo-Americans by means of an earthquake and bring departed loved ones back to life.

In May 1870, bands of Utes traveling through Wasatch County said they had been called to meet in Bannock country, about 50 miles east of Bear Lake, as soon as possible. There, they said, the bands intended to resurrect their forefathers — and that all Indians who wished to see them must be there.

Other dances took place for a few years, including on the Bear River and in Sanpete County.

Although most tribes danced to get rid of the whites, one version of the prophecy actually echoed the Mormon millennial view — that the dead would return and all races would live peacefully forever. Perhaps because the spiritual teachings of the two groups seemed so similar, during the Ghost Dance craze many Shoshones joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

(Reportedly, the conversions were also motivated by the account of an "old Bannock Indian." This man supposedly said three strangers had miraculously visited him, and told him that the Mormon God was the "true God" and the same Being as the Indians' Father. Then they vanished.)

Mormons themselves sometimes saw the Ghost Dance doctrine as a confirmation of their own beliefs. Over time, the interactions between Ghost Dance believers and Mormons led observers to accuse the Mormons of meddling with and inciting the Indians.

But the dances came to naught. Wodziwob's prophecies didn't materialize (and neither did the Mormons'). So the Indians stopped dancing.

But in 1889, a Paiute named Wovoka, inspired by fresh visions, revived a peaceful version of Ghost Dancing. The dance spread to the Great Plains and the Pine Ridge Reservation, where, of course, the military's fierce opposition to Ghost Dance fervor led to the terrible Wounded Knee Massacre in the cold winter of 1890.

Interestingly enough, the Mormons still seemed sympathetic toward Ghost Dancing. As the country watched tensions build up over the dancing on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Deseret News editorialized that Indians had "as much right to their religious exercises as had the whites, so long as they did not injure others. The 'ghost dance,' as the white people please to call it, is no more absurd than the shouting, jumping and falling down extravagancies of spiritually intoxicated white enthusiasts ….

"If the soldiery can lawfully be turned loose on a band of half-frenzied Indians who think they are 'dancing to Christ,' by the same rule troops may be ordered to attack or disperse a mob of excited revivalists shrieking and clapping and jumping their way to 'glory.' "

The paper continued, "The Indians have rights which ought to be respected. ... Red men as well as white men should be protected in their guaranteed privileges."

(I don't have room to deconstruct the many layers of this quote, but on the positive side, the News was speaking up for an oppressed people.)

Returning to the present and our changing world — what "fixes" are we trusting in? Are we trusting in a political solution? Are we trusting that a miracle will come along? Are we trusting that somehow we can regain a lost "ideal" world?

Or, is there another way, another paradigm? I don't know. I'm just asking.

Kristen Iversen can be reached at kristenri@yahoo.com.

Sources: Ghost Dances and Identity, by Gregory E. Smoak; Deseret News.