Biography
Nicholas Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota and a shamanic
healer who had had a vision at the age of nine that he could
help restore his people to their native ways. Black Elk witnessed
the fall of General George A. Custer at Little Big Horn River
in 1876, toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show starting
in 1886, and returned home in time to witness the rise of
the Ghost Dance movement at Pine Ridge. Though skeptical
at first, Black Elk placed great hope in the powers of the
Ghost Dance, only to have his dreams shattered by the tragic
massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. John Neihardt, a
poet laureate of Nebraska, first sought out Black Elk in
1930; with Black Elk's son translating and Neihardt's daughters
transcribing, Neihardt recorded Black Elk's story in Black
Elk Speaks (1932), which remains the best-known Native
American autobiography.
Explorations
Black Elk Speaks, now one of the best-known narratives
by a Native American from the Great Plains, can be challenged
as an imperfect or adulterated text: Black Elk spoke in Lakota;
his son Ben translated what he said into "Indian English," and
John Neihardt, a professional poet, rendered what he heard
into standard English. However, the lineaments of this narrative
seem clear, no matter how many layers of translation and
interpretation they pass through -- and Black Elk's idea
of a self, of autobiography, and of an individual life challenge
and expand our thinking about all three. 1. At the opening of The Great Vision, Black Elk
skips four years of his childhood with the summary observation, "There
were winters and summers, and they were good." What do
moments like this suggest about chronology, and significance,
as this Lakota elder transforms memory into narrative?
2. Black Elk's vision is long and complex and full of
images and mystical symbols. Does Black Elk know the specific
signification of each one? How does he confront mystery
and the psychological and spiritual predicament of not knowing
or understanding all that he experiences?
3. Compare and contrast what constitutes a life-transforming
or life-defining experience -- for Benjamin
Franklin, for Frederick Douglass,
and for Black Elk.
Other sites to consult:
American
Indian Literature and Culture. An impressive
site for Laura Arnold's class at Reed College. Look
at the topics for Week One, particularly those dealing
with reading Black Elk Speaks in historical,
oral, and written literary contexts.
Changes
in Black Elk scholarship. Arthur Verslvis,
a professor at Michigan State University, covers
some of the developments in (and controversies of)
Black Elk scholarship in his review of Clyde Holler's
1995 book Black Elk's Religion.
"A
Great Religious Leader". An essay by Linda
Piatt on the Emerging Voices of the Twentieth
Century site at the University of Texas at Austin.
Includes a link to Vine Deloria, Jr.'s introduction
to the 1988 edition of Black Elk Speaks.
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