Black Elk and I

At first, Black Elk could have been speaking in a different language because his images were very confusing to me. And I didn't understand how he interpreted them the way he did. But as I read on, more of his story made sense to me. And the sadness I felt toward the end with the mistreatment of the buffalo and his people made me think about Earthlings from last class. There's a part of me that can't understand how anyone could do that to another living being, so my only way to cope is to...well, cry. And Black Elk shed tears too--he weeped for his people. But now that my tears are dry, I can explore Black Elk's story and share what it meant to me.

First thing I realized in class on Thursday, and again while reading Black Elk Speaks, is that seeing and hearing a situation has a much more powerful impact than just talking about it. In class on Thursday, I discovered that I could have talked about the horrifying occurrences in slaughterhouses without shedding a tear. But when the movie came on and I saw and heard--it was overwhelming. And my past memories of a scene from Dances with Wolves had the same impact while I read Black Elk Speaks. At one point, Black Elk recalls the decline in the buffalo population:

“I can remember when the bison were so many that they could not be counted, but more and more Wasichus came to kill them until there were only heaps of bones scattered where they used to be. The Wasichus did not kill them to eat; they killed them for the metal that makes them crazy, and they took only the hides to sell. Sometimes they did not even take the hides, only the tongues…”(247)

Even though I don’t remember Dances With Wolves as a whole, one image has stuck with me since I first saw it at a young age. It’s the scene where the Native Americans discover the field of dead, skinned buffalo. It was not only horrible to see skinned buffalo, but my emotions were intensified after seeing how the tribe respected the animals and killed only when necessary. At one point earlier in Black Elk’s story,he even said ,“I felt sorry that we had killed these animals and thought that we ought to do something in return.” (227) Comparing the respectful nature of the Native Americans to the opposite reaction of the bloodthirsty white men makes the scene more powerful.

Prop from Dances With Wolves (glad they were fake!) - see why it stuck with me?

I also found a really powerful scene from the movie that says so much more than words can about the Wasichus. Black Elk talks of their wastefulness, how “they would take everything from each other if they could”, and that “they had forgotten that the earth was their mother”(247).In the following scene from Dances with Wolves, we see proof of Black Elk's words, and we hurt from the mistreatment of nature.

The scene to me is very powerful as they look over the sacred place because it is breathtaking and magical. And when the audience is full of pride in their land, the scene changes quickly to show the mistreatment of the sacred place with butchered animals and a disastrous mess. In effect, the audience is also angry and disappointed in the white men. The movie's impact is important because life lessons are worthless if you don't remember them.

On a lighter note, we have also seen the comparison of two different cultures side by side in other movies. I learned at a very young age that "you can paint with all the colors of the wind" because Pocahontas taught John Smith that "the Earth isn’t just a dead thing you can claim."

Her song sums up the Native American belief in nature(in a Disney-fied version), and it also echoes the symbol of the “sacred hoop” that Black Elk refers to many times. She says “we are all connected to each other in a circle, in a hoop that never ends” and at one point Black Elk sings, “A sacred hoop I wear as I walk.” When Black Elk explains that, “Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were,” he shows that part of what makes the sacred hoop so powerful is its ability to return to where it began.(243) Even though the hoop was broken, he still had hope of restoring it. At the end when he admits that “the nation’s hoops is broken and scattered”, we see that he has accepted that things can never return to the way they were (as they would in a hoop).

Even though his story ends sadly, I believe we are supposed to focus on the triumphs of the Native Americans versus the point they finally broke. Black Elk picked himself back up many times in his life, and with his story we can remember hope, the sacred hoop, earth as our mother, and that we are all one in the Power of the World.