![]() This mission was instilled in him from a mystical vision he had while seriously ill at age 9. Black Elk, then in his mid-60s, reflects back on a life spent trying to heal his people as a whole, not just individuals with medical problems. The editor, John Neihart, was a poet who was writing an epic poem about Messiah movement in the 1880’s among diverse Plains Indians and was seeking Black Elk’s perspective. This is a haunting and moving transcription of interviews with the revered medicine man Black Elk of the Oglala band of the Lakota Sioux in 1930 at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I'm back to the cauldrons, stirring away, stirring away at those pots. What is our vision now, for Native peoples? What do we see for our lives together, in the future? Do we mean for them to keep chewing on cactus and rocks forever? Almost all of them came true, but where are the new prophecies and visions? Who's dreaming them now? What if it had been beautifully illustrated, like Laura's story, and they could have sat, side by side, on my bookshelf?Īlso, I wonder at Black Elk's life of prophecy and visions. ![]() I regret that I didn't know this story, Black Elk's story, as a girl. Tell me, why is gold behind almost every misdeed? government was to get the Native peoples out of dodge, for that very reason. I never knew, before I read this memoir, how much gold was perceived as being up in those hills or just how motivated the U.S. government, and I think most of us know how their story went. It is a state I hold so dear to my heart, and both of them have made me love it even more, realizing what it must have been for them.īlack Elk and his people were considered a serious “inconvenience,” to the U.S. However, they were both successful at the same thing: depicting South Dakota as one of our most beautiful states, a place where young children and their families could both rely on Nature's bounty and be restored by it, in every sense. Wilder's illustrated story of a simple family life was a bigger hit during The Great Depression than a complicated story of the relocation and decimation of an entire race of people. They were not only two of the most famous people ever to put South Dakota on the map, but they both told their stories, for the first time, in print, in 1932.īoth books were well-received, but Ms. Right at the beginning of this story, Black Elk mentions what year it was when he was 9, and I suddenly realized that Black Elk was the same age as Laura Ingalls Wilder (Black Elk was born in 1863, Ms. I've made it to the half-way point, and the audio book is now on its way, too, but I had some interesting revelations of my own, while I was reading this important work. The way I see it, I can either stop everything and read this book alone for the rest of 2020, or I can finish my challenge like the overachiever I am. (Were you aware of how many highly detailed prophetic dreams Black Elk had? I wasn't). This book could be used, easily, as a door stopper, and it's as dense as a marble rye to boot. ![]() In the background, I've got a simmering panic, wondering why in the hell I chose this heavy memoir, Black Elk Speaks, to read now, as it's already October and I've still got 13 more states to get to before the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. It's my favorite time of year, and I've got all the liquids in my cauldrons bubbling on the stove: soup, applesauce, Love Potion #9, and my standard Witches Brew (for poisoning). ![]()
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