A Living, Protected Practice, Described Here Only From the Outside

The ceremonies in which the sacred pipe is used, who may carry a pipe, how one is obtained and passed down, and what the pipe's use is understood to accomplish are matters of closed, community held religious knowledge, transmitted through recognised pipe carriers and ceremonial elders within specific nations rather than published as general instruction, and this entry accordingly describes the object at a public, scholarly level without detailing ceremonial procedure or spiritual teaching that belongs to the traditions themselves.

In 1993 a formal Lakota gathering issued the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality, explicitly naming the pipe and pipe ceremony among the sacred elements that outside individuals and organisations had been commercialising or performing without authority, a documented statement of the real and ongoing concern Plains nations hold about their sacred practice being reconstructed or sold by people outside the tradition. The pipe remains a living, actively used sacred object among the nations that hold this practice today, and its protected status is treated here as a fact to be respected rather than a gap to be filled in with outside speculation.