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  • Writer's pictureKevin Williams

Black Elk's Great Great Granddaughter

Over 40 years ago I was profoundly affected by the wisdom of a Lakota Sioux Holy Man when I read the book "Black Elk Speaks.'' Little did I know that decades later I would be involved in a battle in the heavenlies to keep his great great granddaughter from being dismembered at Planned Parenthood.


There was something going down in the Heavenlies when Emalia's mom and dad chose Life that day. And a cooperation on the earth. A street preacher was Preaching and telling them about God's Law. I was telling them about His Love and Grace. I Held their hands and prayed with them when they decided to keep Emalia. Got their phone # etc. Then they went back inside for almost an hour and we feared we lost the battle. As this was going down several pastors and major prayer warriors "Just happened" to show up and we all stormed heaven until they came out and left. Pastor Chuck and I were so intensely in prayer that another pastor had to yell at us. "Hey....hey....HEY!!!...They just left!!!!" 😊


Makes me wonder if this Holy Man Nicholas Black Elk was there that day Praying and orchestrating the Battle for his Descendant Emalia Black Elk.


PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Basil Brave Heart remembers the day his father pointed him to the great Lakota holy man and Catholic catechist, Nicholas Black Elk, whose cause for canonization was formally opened Saturday by the Diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota.


At a potato farm in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Brave Heart’s family was working on one row that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. Black Elk and his family were working on the next row and had stopped to quench their thirst.


“He said to me in Lakota, ‘The man that’s standing over there: That’s Black Elk,’” Brave Heart told the Register.


Black Elk made a deep impression on Brave Heart as a young Lakota boy. He watched as the Oglala Lakota “holy man” and devout Catholic worked with his family. Brave Heart recalled he was a “very humble man” and “very soft-spoken,” but had a great spiritual dignity about him.

“I felt drawn to his presence,” recalled Brave Heart. Brave Heart, now an 84-year-old Lakota Catholic elder, went to school with Black Elk’s grandchildren and went to war in Korea with Black Elk’s grandson, George Looks Twice.


Basil Brave Heart joined Nicholas Black Elk’s family at Holy Rosary Church, where Bishop Robert Gruss of Rapid City celebrated Mass Oct. 21 to formally open the cause for canonization of Black Elk.


“I’m very supportive of this canonization,” he said. “And I pray that others support this, too.”

Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) is most widely known thanks to Black Elk Speaks, John G. Neihardt’s English-language biographical work that covers his life up to his early 20s and focuses on the Lakota way of life that Black Elk had lived in his youth.


The famous book, however, leaves out the vast majority of how Nicholas Black Elk, who embraced the Catholic faith in 1904, recounted his life to Neihardt in the 1930s. Black Elk became an energetic Catholic catechist, retaining Lakota practices that harmonized with his Catholic faith and setting aside others, such as healing ceremonies. He shared the Gospel to Native and non-Native people, often using his Two Roads pictorial catechism, until his death Aug. 17, 1950.


Jesuit Father Michael Steltenkamp, author of Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary and Mystic and Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala, interviewed numerous Jesuit and Lakota contemporaries of Nicholas Black Elk, gaining a vastly more complete portrait of Black Elk’s path of holiness.


“Whatever vision he had as a youth, it was so influenced over the years by his life as a catechist, that the vision and his Catholic life became one life-inspiration,” Father Steltenkamp said.

According to Jesuit and Lakota witnesses Father Steltenkamp personally interviewed, Black Elk predicted that God would give them a sign at his death. They testified that on the nights between his death and his funeral, the sky seemed nearly bright as day, filled with a spectacular displays of falling lights — “like a water fountain with lights splashing,” one Jesuit told him. Other secular observers confirmed what they saw. Even contemporary journals across North America noted the event, calling it a very unusual aurora borealis. One priest who knew Nicholas Black Elk told him: “It was as if heaven was celebrating the arrival of old Nick. All of us thought something was different that night.”


Lakota elder John Lone Goose had told Father Steltenkamp that many people felt afraid watching this take place over the Pine Ridge reservation because no one had ever seen the sky filled with “miracle-like” light, but they also felt peace. He added, “Maybe the Holy Spirit shined on [Black Elk] because he was such a holy man.”


Thanks for your prayers. I Love you guys!!!




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