“Black Elk, Mountain Maple Wood, North Carolina” © Stu Jenks 2021 [Extended Family Series]

“Black Elk, Mountain Maple Wood, North Carolina” © Stu Jenks 2021, 38 inches tall.

Price: $195, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.

 

I first read the book Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt in the late 1970's. It moved me greatly back then, and it became part of my beginning spiritual journey, which truly didn't take off until I got sober and became a member of a number of 12-Step groups. I'm not trying to sound higher-than-thou here, but Black Elk Speaks was a big deal to me. Sadly that first paperback copy is long gone.

There has been some controversy regarding Neihardt's accuracy of what Black Elk, the Lakota Sioux medicine man, told him in 1930. Perhaps somethings were literally lost in translation, maybe Neihardt didn't understand some things about Lakota spiritual practices, or maybe he just made mistakes, but there are no accounts that say John Neihardt was being exploitative of Black Elk, ever. To the contrary, Black Elk gave John, John's daughter Heidi, and many of John's family members Lakota names and also adopted all of them into his own Native American family. You don't do that for someone you don't like.

And Black Elk was no fool either. He survived The Battle of Little Big Horn, The Buffalo Bill Show, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee. That ain't nothing.

All of that being said, I just reordering Black Elk Speaks today, and I will reread it with new/old eyes. I'm pretty sure it will touch me again, but in new and different ways.

 

Here are a few excerpts from the book:

“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the west, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm.”

“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”

 

“Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways.”

 

“...Crazy Horse was dead. He was brave and good and wise. He never wanted anything but to save his people, and he fought the Wasichus (White People) only when they came to kill us in our own country. He was only thirty years old. They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way. I cried all night, and so did my father.”

 

“Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round . . . The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.”

 

"And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and 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. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy^."

 

 

#blackelk, #blackelkspeaks, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries.