Customer Reviews

Black Elk Speaks

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To potential readers, worried about the authenticity of this work and its right to speak for Native Americans:

The question of how closely the words of this book follow the words of Black Elk has long been debated. It will not be decided here. Turn to the scholarly literature if you truly wish to pursue an answer. I have done that and in my mind (and I do have some education in these realms) am at peace with the book as a genuine expression of turn of the century Lakota spirituality. Neihardt may have written the words, and Ben Black Elk (Black Elk's son) may have done the translating, but Black Elk lived the life, as is corroborated by other sources.

I use the work in my introduction to religion classes, to bring another world to life for my students. Is Black Elk's vision theirs? Of course not. Is the book even Black Elk's vision? Perhaps not exactly. But it is a vision of power and every now and then it awakens a vision in students living 100 years after Black Elk. I belive Black Elks speaks and there is some power in his words still.

This book is a biography of the famous Sioux holy man Nick Black Elk.

It tells of young Black Elk's powerful vision. This is one of the few books to place the colors in the proper directions.

This is not a blanket statement that everything in this book is correct. I noticed two errors.

1. The word Oglala is misspelled throughout the book

2. The photo on page 282. I have seen this photo in other sources, and the indian standing to the left of Nick Black Elk was called by another name.

If you want a biography of the famous holy man this is an excelent book.

If you want a book on American Indian Spirituality go elsewhere.

"The Sacred Pipe" Joseph Epes Brown

"Foolscrow: Wisdom and Power" Thomas E. Mails

"Native Wisdom" Ed McGaa

"Mother Earth Spirituality" Ed McGaa

Please contact me if you have questions or comments. Two Bears

Wah doh Ogedoda "We give thanks Great Spirit"

This is the biography of Black Elk, a wichasha wakon (priest) of the Oglala Sioux, as recorded by John Neihardt. This is not some cheesy new age fiction nor is it a dry documentary told from a western view point. This is the actual life story of a holy man and goes into great detail about his visions. From his words we are able to catch a glimpse of Native American religion and spirituality on the Great Plains as it was in the late 1800s/early 1900s. This stands out as one of the greatest works on Native American religion to date. I highly rocemmend that ANYONE read this book.

I was a student at the time when various fields (Native American studies, Women studies, Afro-American studies, etc.) were just being established, and although I took a minor in anthropology, I never got into the topics underwritten by these new departments. Since I also worked in the book store, I was aware that two of the key texts for Native American studies were Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Black Elk Speaks. Sad to say, but it took me nearly 30 years before I read either book.

The former book was written by a sympathetic outsider who painted the American Indian as a helpless victim of European greed--which for the most part he was/is. The latter was dictated to an interested party, John G. Neihardt, and is the words and reminiscences of Nicholas Black Elk, who witnessed as a child or participated in as an adult, some of the major events of the American Indian Wars that were the outcome of the US expansion into the West. For those of us reared on John Ford westerns, manifest destiny and pioneering had a patriotic ring, as well they might most of them having been made in the years immediately following WWII. In the social souring of the sixties and seventies that brought so many discontented groups vocally into the foreground, it became more obvious that the expression of manifest destiny by our European forebearers spelled manifest disaster for the Native American populations across the country. An outgrowth of the discontent of the "younger generation" was the establishment of the afore said departments. That of American Indian studies introduced us to the more honest, or at least more balanced, story of the indigenous people of the country.

Black Elk Speaks is a superb eye witness account of the Sioux experience with European expansion into the Dakotas. It is a clear narrative of the frightening attack on a child's village by an invader intent upon killing women, children and the elderly as well as the males of fighting age. It tells of a life that revolves around the buffalo, an animal whose numbers were countless during the author's youth but dwindled to near extinction along with the American Indian himself by the end of the narrator's life. The story is one of growing up in a society where the young learn their roles from all adults by observation and imitation, where each individual graduates into the next age grade together with and by the aide of his peers, and where part of what is learned is not simply ones expected "rights" but ones expected responsibilities as well.

Although I enjoyed the story as a whole, I found the narration of the subject's spiritual experiences somewhat tedious, but then I find the repetitive style of the heroic poems of ancient Greece, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and those of Saxon England, like Beowulf, somewhat difficult also. I am a product of my age, a child of the printed rather than the recited word. Perhaps if I had been reared at the fireside of the great houses of ancient Greece and England I would find myself more at one with the rhythm of this style of story telling. Acknowledging this as my own shortcoming, I will say that my favorite part of the book is the author's story of his adventures with a Wild West show in England, of his having been abandoned there when the Tour went home and of his exploits attempting to get home again. The most moving part of the narrative I'll share with you:
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,--you see me now a pitiful old man who had done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead P. 207)."

Powerful.

I truly wanted to like this book more than I did. I had read all the great reviews, and have read a great deal of Native American history. Black Elk's first-hand accounts of some of the most famous moments in American history are priceless, as was his description of Sioux culture; these easily rated five stars. But lengthy chunks of this book are descriptions of Black Elk's dream-like visions. They were obviously very personal, and Black Elk even wonders if he should try to recreate them for auhtor John Neihardt. For me, the re-telling of these visions through an interpreter and then written by a white man left the passages a convoluted and overly-detailed morass. I would, however, still recommend that anyone interested in Native American history read this book.

This is one of the singularly most powerful narratives I have ever read, and, being an academic focused on Native Languages, I have had the opportunity to read many. Black Elk tells the story of his life and his spiritual experiences unabashedly, and with the force and clarity that come with wide experience and careful contemplation. He was a singular individual, and his story is unique, even among his own people. His account is dense and complex, especially regarding his spirituality - and it is naturally very confusing to a Westerner. The historical accounts are fascinating, and more accessible, and drive home with vivid imagery the human beings our country devoured in the name of "progress". (Something particularly useful to remember at this juncture in our history)
For his story to have the right impact, you must believe what Black Elk says to be true. If you're coming to his story for "feel good" new-age spirituality, go read something mushy from the Oprah Book club. Any sort of Western paternalism, most often cloaked in new-age terminology and half-witted sophomoric Literary criticism, about how Black Elk uses "wonderful metaphors" and "fabulous, alive imagery" is really missing the point and dishonors one of the key figures of a very important Native American religious movement - the Sun Dance. This movement is not only important to the Sioux, but to many other tribes in the great plains.
Black Elk is telling you the truth. He wasn't "smoking peyote" as some suggest, or anything of the sort. He really did see a red buffalo that led him through the spirit world. Suggesting that he was confused or delusioned, or feeding half-truths to Mr. Neihardt is like patting him on the head and telling him to trot off to bed so that the 'big boys' can think important things. If you don't accept that premise, you will never understand him or any of his people.
One aspect of his life that has fascinated me the most is his fearless application of faith. He was given a vision in which he was told that a bow would protect him in battle. So he promptly got the bow, and then went out in front of the Union machine guns with it held over his head, riding back and forth. After several trips across the line, he was hit once with a bullet. This he attributes to his own momentarily failing faith, and not to the falsity of the vision. Another man believed he could stop bullets with a sacred pelt-cloak draped across him. He put it on and stood calmly at the crest of the hill in full view of the Union guns. After a while, he came back down and shook the bullets from his clothing onto the ground. I find myself wondering how many of the sweating, blubbering "religious" people in the modern age would be so brave as to put their professed faith into such direct action. Black Elk and many of his fellow warriors LIVED the "matrix"'s dualistic philosophy instead of watching it on TV.
This underscores an excellent message in his narrative - where have we come to? Why do we live this false life now? The trappings of modern civilization that we have been taught to see as blessings and indispensible to life were seen by Black Elk as a curse on his people. They robbed his people of their power and made them helpless. It is left to wonder if this technology has done the same for its creators.

This is an incredible read: an Oglalla Lakota priest and cousin to the famed Crazy Horse relates the story of his life, and his people providing the reader with an intimate and detailed view of Native America at the close of the 19th century. Black Elk gives an eye-wtiness account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the campaigns of Crook, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

It is on the surface the life story of Black Elk, but it is also the story of the Lakota people - as you read it, you get an appreciation of Lakota life and culture. As another reader pointed out, one wonders what was left out, but on the whole there is very little to suggest of a "noble savage" subtext to the book. Of course it ends on a quasi-tragic note - the Lakota living on a reservation in South Dakota, Black Elk an old man, feeling helpless to return the power of the "people's hoop" to his band. Much more than history, it is also poetry and a reminder of what America has lost of its indigenous soul. The book has something to offer everyone, even if it is a simple reflection on our own lives and culture as compared to that of the Native Americans.

Neinhardt's book, taken from the dialogue of Black Elk and others, is perhaps the closest thing to a Native American classic in Literature. Somehow a previously (relatively) unrecorded culture comes alive in this first-hand account of the Lakota life before and after the fight for the Black Hills. Absolutely invaluable.

Not much to add to the other reviews. This is an excellent account of the shameful whiteman's extinction of the most beautiful people to inhabit the earth (I am white :) Did you know that at one time, the American Indians were 1/5 or 20% of the world's population. They lived in virtual peace for 10,000 years, with minor skirmishes, never genocide. There was trade from the tip of South America all the way to Maine. It is the biggest extinction in recorded history. This book is an account of a great leader seeing his people being destroyed. A great book.

If you want a look in to the Native American tradition and you want to see everything from the viewpoint of the inside of their expansive belief system, this is the only book that you want to purchase. It tells the tale of Black Elk. Through the tender care of the author his world is brought to life. I found it an exceptional vision for the world. If we would only see the Universe though different eyes, then maybe the world would be able to pull itself from its centries of downward spin and focus more on the aspect of the Self and the Spirit