Ghost Dance is John Norman's 1970 historical fiction novel wherein a Sioux man and his tradition comes in conflict with a white woman and her civilization as the Wounded Knee Massacre approaches. As with the his Gor series, his main body of work, Norman displays both philosophical reaction and an affinity with incorporating historical events with the actions of fictional characters.
Ghost Dance
by John Norman
"There was little noticeable, little remarkable about Edward Chance, saving perhaps that he had once shot and killed a man....His craft, medicine, was more than a business with him, more than a professional skill. It was a way of healing his own heart too." In GHOST DANCE, it is through Chance's keen eyes and weary heart that readers travel along on a journey of discovery and sorrow. On the run across the plains, Chance stumbles upon Running Horse, a Sioux warrior enacting the sacred and violent ritual of the Sun Dance. Quickly, Chance is pulled into the world of the Sioux people. As their civilization teeters on the brink of destruction, the Sioux perform the mournful and frightening Ghost Dance. Clashes with the white man are rising; the Wounded Knee Massacre approaches, still in the unknown distance; and violence and anger threaten the traditions of a proud and once-great people. Nearby, in her quaint sod house, Miss Lucia Turner awaits the full impact of those clashes. Dust on the horizon signals great change coming to her once-simple life. Lucia will soon become a different kind of woman.With GHOST DANCE author John Norman brings the same vigor and passion of storytelling and imagination that enriches his classic Gor novels to a vivid story of historical upheaval and personal exploration.(less)
Published (first published January 1, 1970)
The Ghost Dance (Caddo: Nanissáanah, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) was a new religious movement incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilson), proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to native peoples throughout the region.
The basis for the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, is a traditional form that has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times, but this new ceremony was first practiced among the NevadaPaiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, Native American tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs.
The Ghost Dance was associated with Wilson's (Wovoka's) prophecy of an end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act. In the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, U.S. Army forces killed at least 153 Miniconjou and Hunkpapa from the Lakota people. The Sioux variation on the Ghost Dance tended towards millenarianism, an innovation that distinguished the Sioux interpretation from Jack Wilson's original teachings. The Caddo Nation still practices the Ghost Dance today.
Ghost Dance is a 1983 British film directed by Ken McMullen. This independent film explores the beliefs and myths surrounding the existence of ghosts and the nature of cinema.
Plot
Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers an analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts, memory and the past. It is an adventure film strongly influenced by the work of Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard but with a unique intellectual and artistic discourse of its own and it is this that tempts the ghosts to appear, for Ghost Dance is permeated with all kinds of phantasmal presence. The film focuses on philosopher Jacques Derrida who considers ghosts to be the memory of something which has never been present. This theory is explored in the film.
This Film has also been compared with the following works; Celine and Julie Go Boating, Thelma & Louise, O Lucky Man, Sans Soleil, Week End, Viva Maria.
It is astonishing that anyone found it publishable.” After the pedestrian crime novel Tough GuysDon’tDance (1984) came the 1300-page Harlot’s Ghost (1991), which covers the entire history of the CIA...
2, Netflix released the movies “Ivy + Bean,” adapted from the series’ first novel (2006), as well as “The Ghost That Had to Go” (2006) and “Doomed to Dance” (2009).
