Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa)
1863–1950 CE
- First attested
- 1932Documented in Neihardt's 1932 text and the 1931 stenographic transcripts held at the University of Missouri.
A true spiritual vision encompasses the healing and sacred flourishing of all living beings.
John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (1932); Raymond J. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather (1984).
Oglala Lakota holy man whose visionary teachings inspired global indigenous appreciation.
Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) was an Oglala Lakota wičháša wakȟáŋ (medicine man and holy man) and second cousin of Crazy Horse. At age nine, he experienced a momentous Great Vision of cosmic unity beneath the sacred Tree of Life. In 1931, he shared his vision with poet John G. Neihardt, who published Black Elk Speaks (1932), a text that became the most widely read window into Native American spirituality. In 1984, anthropologist Raymond DeMallie published the verbatim interview transcripts in The Sixth Grandfather, revealing Neihardt's romantic editorial modifications and detailing Black Elk's dedicated four-decade service as a Roman Catholic catechist (Nicholas Black Elk), whose Catholic canonisation cause opened in 2016.
Light
Universal spiritual brotherhood, prophetic vision, deep humility, and preserving Lakota memory.
Shadow
Romanticized misinterpretation as a defeated relic rather than an active community leader.