Rarely do we have an opportunity to view history from the perspective of the vanquished.\u00a0 \u201cBlack Elks Speaks\u201d, by \u00a0John Neihardt, gives us another window through which we may look at the past.\u00a0 Neihardt\u2019s window shows us a completely different view of history.\u00a0 A view in which honor and dignity belongs not to the victors, but to the vanquished.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack Elk Speaks\u201d grants a Lakota medicine man named Black Elk a voice, and every reader an opportunity to revisit the past.\u00a0 Be warned that this is not a pretty past, it is a troubled one, but one from which each of us can learn a great deal.<\/p>\n
Black Elk has a powerful voice, and Neihardt\u2019s work lets us hear it.\u00a0 Listen carefully and you\u2019ll hear the rustling of the winds, you\u2019ll see the symbols he sees, and you\u2019ll understand that deep down, Black Elk was simply a human \u2013 just like you or I.<\/p>\n
Black Elk, was one of the vanquished.\u00a0 As a youth, he survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.\u00a0 Fourteen years later, in 1890, he managed to escape death at the Wounded Knee Massacre. \u00a0Neihardt\u2019s work is presented as a narration of Black Elk\u2019s words, it includes but is not limited to these incidents.<\/p>\n
I have long held that there are two sides to truth.\u00a0 \u201cBlack Elk Speaks\u201d is the other side of the truth Americans generally see.\u00a0 Through Neihardt\u2019s lens the glorious past does not look as glorious, it looks downright shameful.<\/p>\n
It is not some fanciful romanticized Cowboys and Indians tale of the sort on which I was raised.\u00a0 It is another version of the truth, one in which an honorable, dignified, and ancient culture were systematically cheated, misled, murdered, and ultimately destroyed in the name of western progress.<\/p>\n
It is a powerful revelation of how misuse and abuse of power inevitably results in tragedy.\u00a0 It is a tale of rampant greed allowed to go entirely unchecked.\u00a0 It is a tale of a government spurring its people on, allowing them to ride roughshod over those who get in the way of their vision of progress.\u00a0 It is a tale of symbolism misunderstood.\u00a0 It is a tale of tragedy.<\/p>\n
Is \u201cBlack Elk Speaks\u201d a fun read?\u00a0 Absolutely not.\u00a0 It disturbed me deeply to learn that, in regard to US History, I had never been told the whole truth.\u00a0 Equally disturbing is the realization that came with this knowledge, that many of the supposed truths I had accepted were so badly biased toward one side that they amounted to outright lies.<\/p>\n
Why read something that isn\u2019t enjoyable?<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Where do you derive enjoyment and satisfaction, from learning, or from being blissfully unaware?<\/p>\n If we can\u2019t learn from the past, then we should hold no hope for the future.\u00a0 Black Elk Speaks grants us a glimpse of a past in which many mistakes were made.\u00a0 It really is a learning opportunity for the future.<\/p>\n \u201cBlack Elk Speaks\u201d is not a \u201cstory\u201d or a \u201ctale\u201d, it is another peoples\u2019 truth.<\/p>\n Black Elk\u2019s version of history differs substantially from my romantic childhood visions of the glorious Wild West, in which the Indians were the villains and the Cowboys the heroes.\u00a0 My apologies to all Native Americans, please bear with me for a moment. \u00a0We have learnt a little of dignity in the last 40 years, we\u2019re starting to understand that terms people find insulting should not be used.\u00a0 But we still have a lot to learn.\u00a0 We need to do more than not use derogatory cultural terms, we need to stop believing them.\u00a0 A substantial part of that disbelief is readily available within \u201cBlack Elk Speaks\u201d, which shows us the human side of those we are so willing to dehumanize with derogatory labels.\u00a0 Once we realize that people are people are people, once we begin to understand that we are all the same on the inside, once we learn that we all have similar aspirations, once we are able to tear off the labels and look at the individuals\u2026\u00a0 Then we begin to realize that the world is a world of we, not a world of me.\u00a0 Hopefully we also begin to realize that dignity is not granted by our discarding offensive labels such as \u201cindian\u201d, it is granted by the way we act towards the people we so labeled.<\/p>\n While we cannot make right the wrongs done in the past, we can learn the other side of truth.\u00a0 Are knowledgeable people less likely to repeat past errors?\u00a0 We can only hope they are.<\/p>\n My exposure to “Black Elk Speaks” distressed me sufficiently to prompt this tweet.<\/p>\n Western civilization — C.G.Ayling (@CGAyling) December 3, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nMy further thoughts.<\/h2>\n
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is a culture of conquer, and claim,
everywhere it rides is thunder and acid rain,
theft,
without conscience, or shame.<\/p>\n