Black Elk: Lakota Holy Man, Catholic Catechist
patheos.com ^ | May 02, 2011 | Pat McNamara

Posted on Thursday, May 05, 2011 2:36:51 PM by GonzoII

In Ages Past

Black Elk: Lakota Holy Man, Catholic Catechist

Black Elk's conversion was actually where he found true freedom and fulfillment as a healer and teacher.

By Pat McNamara, May 02, 2011

In his book Black Elk Speaks, author John Neihardt interviewed a Lakota holy man who recounted pre-reservation life and events he witnessed, including Custer's Last Stand and the Wounded Knee massacre. Later, anthropologist Joseph Epes Brown interviewed Black Elk about Lakota religious traditions for his book The Sacred Pipe (1953). Both works are touched with a certain sadness, that of a man whose best days have passed.

Together they introduced millions to the richness of Native American traditions.

But Black Elk's prestige among his own people had little to do with these books. It was based more on his ministry as a Catholic catechist on South Dakota reservations. A convert to Catholicism, for nearly fifty years he helped prepared people for baptism, led prayer meetings, organized events for Native American Catholics, and worked as a lay missionary to the Lakota (also called Sioux).

A member of the Oglala branch of the Lakota Sioux, Black Elk was born around 1865 on the Little Powder River in what is now Wyoming. As a child, he told Neihardt:

We roamed the country freely, and this country belonged to us in the first place. There was plenty of game and we were never hungry. But since the white man came we were fighting all the time.

A second cousin of the great war chief Crazy Horse, as a teen Black Elk was at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But the defining moment in his life occurred earlier at age 9, when he experienced a vision that defined his future.

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