A good nation I will make live.This the nation above has said.They have given me the power to make over.
BLACK ELKThe visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.
More Black Elk Quotes
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Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.
BLACK ELK -
Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
BLACK ELK -
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.
BLACK ELK -
And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
BLACK ELK -
Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.
BLACK ELK -
The hawk swoops down on its prey, so does the Indian. In his lament he is like an animal.
BLACK ELK -
When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
BLACK ELK -
Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
BLACK ELK -
Know the Power that is Peace.
BLACK ELK -
If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
BLACK ELK -
But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.
BLACK ELK -
There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
BLACK ELK -
We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important.
BLACK ELK -
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
BLACK ELK -
I was four years old then, and I think it must have been the next summer that I first heard the voices.
BLACK ELK







