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So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.

Black Elk

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Black Elk
Age: 86 †
Born: 1863
Born: December 1
Died: 1950
Died: August 19
Heyoka
Medicine Man
Tribal Chief
Bright
Center
Sticks
Red
Took
Nation
Hoop
Nations
Thrust
Earth
Stick

More quotes by Black Elk

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Every place is the center of the world.
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It is in the darkness of their eyes that men lose their way.
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I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it.
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It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.
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And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
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Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions
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Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. 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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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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To use the power of the bison, I had to perform that part of my vision for the people to see.
Black Elk
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You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.
Black Elk
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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
Black Elk
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When I got back to my father and mother and was sitting up there in our tepee, my face was still all puffed and my legs and arms were badly swollen but I felt good all over and wanted to get right up and run around.
Black Elk
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The power of the world always works in circles.
Black Elk
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It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything then he knows that world which is real.
Black Elk
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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.
Black Elk
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I was four years old then, and I think it must have been the next summer that I first heard the voices.
Black Elk
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All things are our relatives what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.
Black Elk
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And if the great fear had not come upon me, as it did, and forced me to do my duty, I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me.
Black Elk
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Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
Black Elk
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Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
Black Elk