The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples. It is not some fanciful romanticized Cowboys and Indians tale of the sort on which I was raised. It is another version of the truth, one in which an honorable, dignified, and ancient culture were systematically cheated, misled, murdered, and ultimately destroyed in the name of western progress. Es lūkojos atpakaļ pagātnē un atsaucu atmiņā savas tautas seno dzīvesveidu, bet vairums vairs nedzīvoja tā kā agrāk. Viņi bija uzsākuši iet pa melno ceļu, katrs pats par sevi, ievērojot tikai nedaudzus savus likumus" (194.lp.)

Black Elk Speaks : Nebraska Press Black Elk Speaks : Nebraska Press

During the period 1850 to 1900, a great clash of cultures and civilizations occurred on the high western plains of the United States. One culture was that of the plains Indians, a culture of nomadic, hunter gathers. It was a culture imbued with a mythology that believed the natural world was undergirded by a world in which all creatures including humans and inanimate objects were representations, impowered and interconnected to and by an underlying spiritual world. The other culture, that of white Europeans was a culture that believed that the natural world was separate from the human world, a world meant to be under the dominion and domination of human beings, a world to be extracted from and exploited by humans for the creation of wealth. The denouement of this conflict of cultures was in the end never in doubt but it resulted in one of the more shameful and tragic episodes of American history. Uppermost though, it is the story of a people that were self-sacrificing for the good of all, that only wanted to live with Nature as they always had, even on what little was left them in treaties. The obstacles were overwhelming though, with the greed of the weedy materialistic culture wanting all there was, and having no respect for the natural world. It is an age old story of avarice and genocide, this genocide the greatest by far in humankind's history [see Genocide of indigenous peoples, and Genocides in history articles on Wikipedia], estimated at upwards of ninety percent of the Indigenous population. According to geographers from University College London, the colonization of the Americas by Europeans killed so many people it resulted in climate change and global cooling. 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. My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life…and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills…This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange lands and men…But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people’s dream that died in bloody snow.

Selected

Arī šajā grāmatā ir faktu materiāls par to, piemēram, viņi karo pat savā starpā, nogalina, rituālos upurē dzīvniekus, necienīgi izturas pret ienaidnieka līķiem - noskalpē, savāc apģērbu... This should be required reading for all. The way Indians were treated is overlooked and frankly, we should all pause to understand how our lives were influenced in some way by the broken promises of our ancestors. It's disgusting, disappointing, disrespectful. The way Indians were abused, the disease the settlers spread, and how Indians still pay 150 years later with poverty, alcoholism, and perhaps worst of all, the loss of their identity. Damn. Diemžēl laika gaitā indiāņi ir pakāpeniski kļuvuši par ļoti izkropļotu tautu un vispār nevar salīdzināt ar tās sākotnējo potenciālu. Although harder for our scientific western culture to fathom, it is also possible to see these visions as visions, experienced by a person who was open to them by either illness or ability. Hearing the Lakota side of the stories of their battles with the U.S. to hold on to the land and to maintain the culture that they loved so much was so eye-opening and personal to me. My heart aches for the victims of this American holocaust.

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary - Goodreads Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary - Goodreads

All of the metaphorical + verbal clichés used relative to the time period this was written in are extremely annoying to read repeatedly & makes this feel even more inauthentic & embellished than I already know it is. I'm at the point in life where there is little else to linger for save yesterday. This book took me there in spades. The book as published in 1932 had little readership, but its translation into German inspired Jung and others, and a new English edition in 1961 reached a wider audience that peaked in the 70’s.You have said to me, when I was still young and could hope, that in difficulty I should send a voice four times, once for each quarter of the earth, and you would hear me. This is a story from the perspective of indigenous beliefs, born of how they perceived the natural world they had an intimate relationship with. A people with deep respect for the unknowable, that knew well the brightness and darkness inherent in the psyche of all life forms, and that understood the connectedness of all life. That in sharp contrast to so-called civilized peoples that plunder our little blue canoe, blindly driving nails in humankind's coffin. The timeline at the end is excellent. Really helps put things in perspective as an easy reference point. Their connections don't stop there. 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.

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the

I could see that the Wasichus did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. I'm trained to be suspicious of stories like this: an old Lakota shaman decides to tell all about his previously secret visions to a white poet so he can write them in English and publish them. ??! But a shallow-digging internet search does not turn up anything suggesting against this, so okay.It's the story of a man who was born in a free land, saw his land taken by force and most horribly, saw his culture all but completely obliterated. He was both a Native medicine man and a Catholic, albeit the latter most likely as a means of survival for both himself and his people. His life spans the time of the Native "victory" at Little Big Horn, European tours with Wild Bill, WWII and his meetings with Neihardt and his eventual death. Les Wasichus nous ont mis dans ces boites carrées (maisons), notre pouvoir s'en est allé et nous allons mourir parce que le pouvoir n'est plus en nous.

Another Vision of Black Elk | The New Yorker Another Vision of Black Elk | The New Yorker

That may explain his transformation of the plain-spoken style of the transcript into a somewhat maudlin kind of free verse, seeming to my eyes to be modeled after Goethe's "Sorrows of Young Werther" or the American transcendentalists. One of the stage presentations was the first 'paying gig' for Wes Studi, with the lead played by none other than David Carradine. [10] See also [ edit ]Climax: Tensions mount between the Wasichu soldiers and the Sioux as the Ghost Dance movement revitalizes the Indian resistance. These tensions culminate in the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which many Lakota—mainly women and children—are murdered by U.S. soldiers.