Rites Of Passage Analysis

Rites of Passage is a process that people of Apache in New Mexico provide to thirteen years old girls, who are going to enter the womanhood. This ceremony started in ancient traditions and as the young girls became women, their family and friends were there to support them mentally and spiritually. It is completed with the young girls’ beloved ones, and they all participate and witness the girl’s journey. Rites of Passage lasts four days and participants are tested in strength, endurance, and character. The whole process requires the girls to perform strict rules; have a small amount of food, little sleep, and no emotions.

Once the actual ceremony begins, the girl is escorted by her medicine woman and the other girls, through the four stages of life; infant, child, adolescent, and woman, which includes hours of dancing. Rituals of running are also important, where they have to run east toward the sun at sunrise, and then run toward all four directions (symbolically through the four stages of life). After all this running, which is the liminal phase, girls’ faces are painted with white clay that symbolize the goddess. By the time that they run toward the basket, the teenagers wipe out the clay and they are officially becoming women.
As Kristin Norget says in the textbook, “During the liminal stage, the individual undergoing the rite is symbolically situated “outside society” and may be subject to certain rules or taboos, or restrictions on his her behavior or movement” (106). More specific, in Dashina Cochise’s situation, the liminal phase is when she has to dance overnight for ten hours. This is important for the Rites of Passage, because it is something difficult that young girls might not