ghost dance

plural ghost dances

1. One of the dances of the Ghost Dance religion.

1. A 19th-century religious movement, incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems, according to which performing a dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead and bring prosperity and unity to native peoples.

   It would be difficult to designate the Ghost Dance of the Indians of North America, for instance, as anything but a phenomenon of acculturation; […].

   1958, Melville J. Herskovits, Acculturation, Peter Smith, page 12

   2 more examples

   In the fall of 1890, a new religious fever, “Ghost Dancing,” spread among the Indian tribes pushed to the far edge of the prairies by broken treaties and the advance of the white man. Their religion held that floods would come, destroying, the whites. And then, game would return; dead Indians would be resurrected, and living Indians would be protected from all harm by wearing painted ghost shirts and performing the special dance.

   1973 March 4, John Kifner, “The Ghosts Dance Once Again at Wounded Knee”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   In life, many of the Army’s victims were the followers of the Ghost Dance, a nineteenth-century faith that originated with a vision, delivered, it was said, by God to the Paiute messiah Jack Wilson, more commonly known as Wovoka.

   2019 December 5, Julian Brave NoiseCat, “Perhaps the World Ends Here: The coming battle over space”, in Harper's Magazine, →ISSN

plural Ghost Dances

1. Alternative letter-case form of ghost dance.