Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Black Elk (Native American Spiritual Leader)

Black Elk (1863–1950,) originally Heȟáka Sápa, was a spiritual leader of the Oglala Lakota branch of the Sioux nation. A second cousin of the war leader Crazy Horse, Elk was a wičháša wakȟáŋ (“medicine man, holy man”) and “heyoka” of his tribe.

Black Elk was born into an Oglala Lakota family along the Little Powder River in present-day Wyoming. Black Elk survived Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee massacre.

Black Elk is best known for the autobiography Black Elk Speaks (1932,) compiled and written by American poet and novelist John G. Neihardt. Black Elk’s narratives, translated into English by his son Ben Black Elk, included boyhood participation in battles with the U.S. Army, becoming a medicine man, and joining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1886.

Black Elk Speaks was translated into multiple languages, and it became a significant source of information about 19th-century Plains Indian culture. It also spurred great interest in Native American traditions and religions.

In his forties, Black Elk converted to Catholicism. He also became a catechist, teaching others about Christianity. In 2016, the Roman Catholic Diocese initiated an official cause for his beatification.

In addition, in 2016, The U.S. Board of Geographic Names renamed South Dakota’s highest peak in the Black Hills National Forest as Black Elk Peak.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Black Elk

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
Black Elk
Topics: Peace

Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?
Black Elk
Topics: Wilderness

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.
Black Elk

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
Black Elk
Topics: Children

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