Black Elk Speaks By John G. Neihardt And Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Black Elk was a holy man of the Oglala band of the Lakota Sioux nation. Black Elk interpreted his life as a holy man as "the story of a mighty vision" (BES, p. 2). As a child, Black Elk was blessed with a great vision from the other world. In receiving his great vision, Black Elk received a great power, a "power to make over" (BES, p. 201), a power to make things better for sick and suffering individuals and nations. He did not know it at the time, but this vision would be the blueprint of his life. It would guide him through times when he doubted his importance to his people. He had other visions, but they all tied into the great vision he experienced as a child. Black Elk made incredible

From its birth, America was a place of inequality and privilege. Since Columbus 's arrival and up until present day, Native American tribes have been victim of white men 's persecution and tyranny. This was first expressed in the 1800’s, when Native Americans were driven off their land and forced to embark on the Trail of Tears, and again during the Western American- Indian War where white Americans massacred millions of Native Americans in hatred. Today, much of the Indian Territory that was once a refuge for Native Americans has since been taken over by white men, and the major tribes that once called these reservations home are all but gone. These events show the discrimination and oppression the Native Americans faced. They were, and continue to be, pushed onto reservations,

“There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a windruffled sea

Black Elk Speaks, a personal narrative, has the features of many different genres. The different genres that I noticed were in the book were, autobiography, testimonial, tribal history, and elegy. Black Elk Speaks is divided into 25 chapters, which portray the early life of Black Elk. The author tells us that Black Elk was a healer and a great holy man. He was said to have this mystical vision since he was young. As a tribal history, it shows the change of the Sioux nation from pre-reservation to reservation culture, including their partaking in the ghost dance, the Battle of Little Big Horn, and Wounded Knee. Black Elk Speaks propositions testament to the price in human grief that the Sioux had to pay for the United States expanding westward. It grieves his cultural misplacement and the age of being innocent and being free.

Native Americans have felt distress from societal and governmental interactions for hundreds of years. American Indian protests against these pressures date back to the colonial period. Broken treaties, removal policies, acculturation, and assimilation have scarred the indigenous societies of the United States. These policies and the continued oppression of the native communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension. Governmental pressure for assimilation and their apparent aim to destroy cultures, communities, and identities through policies gave the native people a reason to fight. The unanticipated consequence was the subsequent creation of a pan-American Indian identity

Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt is a story told for readers that take them on an adventure to knowing and caring about Black Elk himself and his tribe of his people. Neihardt talked about the spiritual visions of Black Elk that preceded sacred ceremonial dances, such as the Heyoka Ceremony, which followed Black Elk’s Dog Vision. Neihardt discussed the feelings and emotions that Black Elk felt from the visions he was experiencing; the sorrow that overwhelmed him as he witnessed the loss of loved ones and the conflict that he continually suffered while taking on such an essential duty for his tribe. Black Elk recognized that his people and their culture were starting to dwindle away. Neihardt expressed Black Elk's passion towards this situation by creating a vivid picture of the conflict that the

     Native Americans have felt distress from societal and governmental interactions for hundreds of years. American Indian protests against these pressures date back to the colonial period. Broken treaties, removal policies, acculturation, and assimilation have scarred the indigenous societies of the United States. These policies and the continued oppression of the native communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension. Governmental pressure for assimilation and their apparent aim to destroy cultures, communities, and identities through policies gave the native people a reason to fight. The unanticipated consequence was the subsequent creation of a pan-American Indian

For the entirety of his 27 years, Black Elk’s somber eyes had watched as the way of life for his fellow Lakota Sioux withered on the Great Plains. The medicine man had witnessed a generation of broken treaties and shattered dreams. The Lakota, who once roamed as free as the bison on the Great Plains, were now mostly confined to government reservations. Life for the Sioux had become as bleak as the weather that gripped the snow-dusted prairies of South Dakota in the winter of 1890. A glimmer of hope, however, had begun to arise with the new Ghost Dance spiritual movement, but this movement was seen as a threat, and was treated with a massacre. When Black Elk closed his wizened eyes in 1931, he could still envision the horror. “When I look back now from this high hill of my old age,” he told writer John G. Neihardt for his 1932 book “Black Elk Speaks,” “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

Their history is all but erased, their lives destroyed in the pursuit of material wealth (resource extraction). Superficial statues and hollow tributes now stand where vibrant human communities once lived for millennia. The US Government, unrecognized by vast portions of Native Americans, hence illegitimate in their eyes, ruthlessly imposed treaties, laws, cultural mandates and regulations on a population who never asked for such measures. There was resistance, but it was stamped out. Thus, the bloody history of European settlement is never far from the minds of indigenous people living in the US.

In order to receive such sacred information Neihardt had to become a tribal member; predictably Neihardt returned in the spring and through a series of rituals became adopted as Black Elk’s spiritual son (Holler, 1984). On May 10th 1931 Neihardt began to learn Black Elk’s story, over a period of 18 days he sat with Black Elk while Black Elk’s son Ben interpreted the language between the two and Neihardt’s daughter Enid documented the conversation in short hand; forming the first few layers of possible bias in the work.

The story of Nicholas Black Elk was one that was reluctantly told, a Lakota medicine man, a visionary of his own sort. Written by John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks captures the essence of what the Lakota culture based its teachings off of, as well as exhibiting who Black Elk really was. When Neihardt began his dialogues with Black Elk he knew which questions to ask, his plan was clear from the beginning. There were choices made by Neihardt that seem controversial, such as why he decided to end his book at the Battle of Wounded Knee instead of continuing through Black Elk’s life and his conversion to Catholicism. The steps taken by Neihardt succeeded in portraying Black Elk’s own story, and the importance of his vision on his life.

Built by immigrants across the globe, the United States has flourished tremendously for the past 100 years. But what we tend to overlook are the millions of unheard voices deep in the plains, those of the non-immigrants, the Native Americans. Rich in their culture and heritage, the Native Americans built a system, and co-existed with the environment, in which they hunted and gathered, and shared amongst one another. Their reign was long, and their territory plenty, but this would only last until the early 1490’s when Christopher Columbus would reached the Americas and instill a change and fear that would offset the balance for centuries. With weapons that surpassed that of the indians, they were soon overpowered, leading to years of oppression and division of the races.

The settlers from Europe have manipulated the people of North America into thinking Indigenous people are second class citizens, and this perspective has become the accepted cultural norm. The text “Why Say Settler” explains how North Americans have admitted that the Indigenous nations were wrongly treated in the past, yet they continue to colonize their land and discriminate against them today. The film “Kanehsatake: 270 years of resistance” demonstrates that even as late as the end of the last century, the settlers continue to treat the Indigenous communities as poorly as they did in the 18th century, building on their land and treating them as though they are of lesser importance. The film and the text are both examples of the lack of respect

Since the very start of the colonisation of America, there has always stood the problem of dealing with the indigenous people of the land. After the first attempts in the eradication of the population, the policy was changed to integration by the American government, and it is this integration and mending into the white communities that caused disenfranchisement throughout the modern Indian reservations.

The Native Americans were forced and paid to leave their traditional lands and either chose to hide from or ‘join’ the white people by living on reserves. Their native tongue, teachings and traditions were soon to be extinct and one man named Ishi and his family went around trying to pass on their culture to the new inhabitants of their land, The whites. Unfortunately, Ishi died not long after, a subject of disease. And thanks to his efforts and the efforts of people all around America, white people began to rally against the government alongside the natives. Native Americans were granted the same rights as any other American in 1924 and were soon merged in with the rest of society.