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The new Lakota Studies building at Sinte Gleska University in Mission, South Dakota. Photo by Bernie Hunhoff.
Black Elk Was Right
Mar 23, 2012
Our writers and photographers have constantly visited South Dakota's nine Indian reservations throughout our 27 years of publishing. While poverty and other problems obviously plague many — yes, most — of the rural communities, considerable progress has been made in this last generation.
Black Elk, the Lakota holy man, predicted long ago that his people would find new hope in the seventh generation. If his starting point was the arrival of the white man in the mid 19th century, the seventh generation is about at hand — and there is much reason for hope.
In our own travels, we've met many new tribal leaders who seem quite determined to make life better. And in the state capitol in Pierre, a dark-skinned attorney named J.R. LaPlante has been appointed Secretary of Tribal Relations and Governor Dennis Daugaard has asked J.R. to help him and his staff understand the Indian culture and to help them find solutions to lingering problems.
The biggest change we've witnessed on the rez in our one generation of publishing is the development of the tribal colleges. They have brought jobs, role models and opportunities that simply didn't exist. Now, well-educated young Indians have a venue for service and leadership.
Despite the best efforts on our public and private universities, Lakota and Dakota students struggled to graduate in Vermillion and Brookings and Spearfish and the other campuses. In the neighborhood tribal schools, they learn to become nurses, teachers, entrepreneurs and administrators — and once they graduate they fill job needs in the local schools and health care facilities.
The tribal colleges were founded in buildings that would have been condemned on most university campuses. But as they proved their worth — and thanks, obviously, to federal dollars — the schools have constructed innovative and inspiring buildings that would be the envy of any college president. We particularly like some of the new structures at Sinte Gleska on the Rosebud campus. In the northeast, the Sisseton Wahpeton College campus features the architecture of a drum and dancers.
We've watched boys at Red Cloud learn to run and shoot with a basketball, and we've watched young girls dance in fancy regalia at pow wows. Our next issue of South Dakota Magazine has a major article by Herbert T. Hoover, the distinguished historian from USD, on how the tribes kept their old traditions alive while accepting new ways, like basketball.
But perhaps the best gauge for Black Elk's prediction of hope for the seventh generation lies in a statistic reported today by Chris Mueller of the Mitchell Daily Republic. He notes that the average life expectancy in Shannon County (on the Pine Ridge reservation) has risen from 58 to 71 years in just the last 10 years. Though the state average is 77, the progress shown in just 10 years in one of America's poorest counties is notable.
Nobody ever doubted the wisdom of Black Elk. His prophecy is coming true, but only because leaders — especially Indian leaders — persistently work for improvements despite negativity and naysaying both on and off the rez.
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Comments
What is written here is beautiful and very special, but I think its time to help our Native people truly come into our own by allowing us to tell our own stories.
Thank you so much for this wonderfully written piece!
It is good to witness that their vision and foresight are being afirmed.
It has been challenging getting everyone here, but all the players are indeed here, so the opportunity for this enlightenment is before us.
I have long hated my people for what they have done to you. The list should be put in a file and sent to Obama and Trump. They may Know some. But not all.
The liscence of the pipeline people must be pulled and never renewed. Mr Trump has said he wants the last pipeline you stopped to go forward. This must not be allowed to take place ever and you should meet with him on this subject.
He wants to open up all scour es of energy, but he must limit the old sources of energy in order for the new scources to be shown that they can work well and be profitable. The rich must be shown that investing in these new scources of energy is the best way to go. Especially if they can bring it to other countries such as Russia and China and Germany before they get it themselves. There are so many ways to make most oil obsolete, not gone, just not so needed. Helping people get away from building the traditional shaped homes that don't need heating systems at all. That generate their own electricity, which would save the whole country from an EMP from space. Leave the people debt free by paying for the whole house. No mortgage, no heating bills. Those two alone save people tens of thousands/year. Which means we could see the return to the one income family over time yet pay the earner a good pay w/benefits paid by the company because they are saving the same ways. The GOVERMENT and the energy saving home builders, and the retail stores should get together to make contracts binding them together in the complete new home creation initiative!
I hope Black Elk is declared a saint in the Catholic Church in my lifetime. I believe his life was a living example of how settler and First Nations societies will have to really join, no assimilation of either, but as in how Black Elk lived his life taking the best of both worlds which will be Grandmother's Earth's and in turn humanity's only hope of survival. And that means all the nations on Turtle Island, and in turn, the world. Which is the only way this world will survive, with one love, like the song goes, a brotherhood of man. I really have a sense without being a part of that world fully but once having attending ceremonies, dances, and having my ears talked off about the Lakota way of *everything* (which I didn't mind, I have saskatoon berry bushes right in my back yard so I can make wasna still, ha-ha). Kimimela was so right about everything.
I just found out a few days ago that I'm going to be a new grandfather and she would have been a new grandmother to a new baby coming soon, and how happy she would be to know her grandchild was part of the seventh generation. I'm from Saskatchewan now, but I love this website, thank you to the publishers, writers, editors, et al.