The hawk swoops down on its prey, so does the Indian. In his lament he is like an animal.
BLACK ELKEach family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
More Black Elk Quotes
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The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
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The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.
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Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
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The Great Spirit is everywhere; He hears whatever is in our minds and our hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.
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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.
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It’s in the darkness of men’s eyes that they get lost.
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And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
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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.
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I cured with the power that came through me.
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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.
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Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice.
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The visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.
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The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
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It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.
BLACK ELK