"The BIA was entirely unwilling to accept the Native insistence that the Ghost Dance was religious and must be granted the right to religious freedom. Ghost Dancers invoked this freedom before and after Wounded Knee. 'This is our way of worshipping the Great Spirit,' a Lakota chief explained to one Jesuit missionary who, hoping to avert tragedy, was trying to convince the Lakota people to abandon the dance. 'You white folks have different prayers, and you quarrel saying each that the other is not right. Let us alone; let us worship the Great Spirit in our own way.' Why should Indians change their way of worshiping he asked, when white Christians could not agree themselves on which of their own conflicting traditions were correct? This chief implicitly located the Ghost Dance within the denominational structure of American religion and, in so doing, asserted its right to the same status as any of the white churches."

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