Black Elk / Hehaka Sapa (Lakota Holy Man & Divine Visionary)

Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa) was born into the Oglala Lakota nation during the height of the Plains Indian Wars. He participated as a youth in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 and survived the horrific Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.

The Great Vision of the Six Grandfathers

At the age of nine, during a twelve-day coma, Black Elk was transported to the high spirit realm of the Six Grandfathers (the powers of the West, North, East, South, Sky, and Earth). They presented him with the Sacred Pipe, the Flowering Tree of Life, and a vision of the sacred hoop of his nation united with the hoops of all nations: 'I saw myself on the central mountain of the world... 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.'

Preserving Indigenous Sacred Lore

Later serving as a Catholic catechist while maintaining his sacred Lakota spiritual duties, Black Elk dictated his life and vision in 1931 to poet John G. Neihardt (resulting in the classic Black Elk Speaks) and recorded the seven secret rites of the Oglala Lakota with Joseph Epes Brown in The Sacred Pipe, preserving Indigenous cosmic wisdom for future generations.