Black Elk
Black Elk
Heȟáka Sápa was a famous wičháša wakȟáŋand heyoka of the Oglala Lakotawho lived in the present-day United States, primarily South Dakota. He was a second cousin of the war chief Crazy Horse...
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native-american circles shapes
I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.
native-american circles world
The power of the world always works in circles.
moving native-american circles
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
native-american circles done
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.
native-american circles bird
Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
native-american circles people
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
native-american circles doe
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles.
inspirational native-american circles
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
circles community together
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
across black eagle feather forehead lightning painted red single wore
I was painted red all over with black lightning on my limbs. I wore a black mask, and across my forehead a single eagle feather hung.
helping sixteen
I was sixteen years old and more, and I had not yet done anything the Grandfathers wanted me to do, but they had been helping me.
bears calf carved eagle earth feathers feeds gave grass hanging mean pipe side sky stem tied twelve
Then she gave something to the chief, and it was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, and with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem to mean the sky and the twelve moons, and these were tied with a grass that never breaks,
uncles lying men
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
red sticks earth
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.