In order to preserve his traditional culture, this Sioux seer related its values and traditions to the winder world. Acounts of his visions and of the tribal dances he carried out according to those visions are particularly vivid and notable. Still very influential today. - "Earth works - recommended fiction and non fiction about nature and the environment for adults and young adults."

Black Elk Speaks is the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century. Black Elk's searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Neihardt, cross multiple genres. Black Elk met the distinguished poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and asked Neihardt to share his...

"In Black Elk, Lakota Visionary, Harry Oldmeadow draws on recently discovered sources and in-depth research to provide a major re-assessment of Black Elk's life and work. The author explores Black Elk's mystical visions, his controversial engagement with Catholicism, and his previously unrecognized attempts to preserve and revive ancestral Sioux beliefs and practices. Oldmeadow's lively and highly readable account also examines the controversies that...