Sacred Tree

"In the great vision which came to me in my youth, when I had known only nine winters, there was something which has seemed to me to be of greater and greater importance as the moons have passed by. It is about our sacred pipe and its importance to our people.

We have been told by the white men, or at least by those who are Christian, that God sent to men His son, who would restore order and peace upon the earth; and we have been told that Jesus the Christ was crucified, but that he shall come again at the Last Judgment, the end of this world or cycle.

This I understand and know that it is true, but the white men should know that for the red people too, it was the will of Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit, that an animal turn itself into a two-legged person in order to bring the most holy pipe to His people; and we too were taught that this White Buffalo Cow Woman who brought our sacred pipe will appear again at the end of this “world,” a coming which we Indians know is now not very far off. Most people call it a “peace pipe,” yet now there is no peace on earth or even between neighbors, and I have been told that it has been a long time since there has been peace in the world.

There is much talk of peace among the Christians, yet this is just talk. Perhaps it may be, and this is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe… I shall explain what our pipe really is. Peace may come to those peoples who can understand, an understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that we pray to Him continually.

I have… no other desire than to help my people in understanding the greatness and truth of our own tradition, and also to help in bringing peace upon the earth, not only among men, but within men and between the whole of creation. We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends.”

~ Black Elk, Manderson, South Dakota

~ "Black Elk (1863-1950), whose Indian name was Hehaka Sapa, was a renowned Oglala Sioux spiritual leader and medicine man. He was the second cousin of Crazy Horse. Black Elk participated, at about the age of twelve, in the Battle of Little Big Horn of 1876, and was wounded in the massacre that occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890. He left the reservation in 1886 and toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Europe, returning in 1889.

Black Elk married his first wife, Katie War Bonnett, in 1892. She became a Catholic, and all three of their children were baptized as Catholic. After her death in 1903, he too became baptized, taking the name Nicholas Black Elk, and continued to serve as a spiritual leader among his people, seeing no contradiction in embracing what he found valid in both his tribal traditions concerning Wakan Tanka (The Great Spirit), and those of Christianity.

Black Elk met the poet John Neihardt in 1930, a meeting that resulted in the book Black Elk Speaks (1932). Black Elk dictated his autobiography to Neihardt and recounted Lakota history and traditions in an effort to preserve them. In 1947, Joseph Epes Brown met Black Elk in Nebraska. Brown spent the next winter with the elderly spiritual teacher in Manderson, South Dakota. Through that contact and their conversations, Black Elk provided the details of seven traditional rituals of the Oglala people which Brown published as The Sacred Pipe. The rites described included the purification ceremony (the sweat lodge), crying for a vision, female puberty, marriage, soul-keeping, throwing the ball, and the greatest medicine of all traditional Plains people, the Sun Dance."

"Mitakuye Oyasin, All my Relations.

I would like to remind this great gathering of the vision of Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk and the vision he had at Harney Peak.

"Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. 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.

And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father, and I saw that it was holy."

I was just a young woman when the first Spiritual Unity of Tribes gatherings were held on the Pasqua Indian Reserve in Saskatchewan. Each morning at dawn the people gathered and the medicine men would bring out their pipes and hold their morning ceremonies.

In 1988, the Elders were insistent and filled with urgency. Understanding must be given to all of humankind, they had said. The time had come to begin preparing the people for the fulfillment of Black Elk’s prophecies.

That was before the third great shaking of the Earth at the turn of the century. The lives of the people then were filled with the pursuit of material and physical pleasures. They had forgotten the values of respect, tolerance, compassion, and honesty.

They had embraced the false values of rationalism and had moved far from the spiritual teachings of their ancestors. There were great wars then, and great fighting. Men, women and children were all victims. In that time, the grandmothers had lost their voices. Mother Earth was ruled by men, and the energy of male and female was out of balance.

But at those first gatherings, there came those who remembered Black Elk’s vision and who knew that these days we are living today would one day come.

On the whole Earth, only a few thousand came to the first gatherings. Within seven years, gatherings were held from Siberia in the North to Australia in the South, and in the heart of Turtle Island (North America). They were held until wars and economic collapse stopped all travel for a time. At the last gathering only the Old Ones met at Six Nations in eastern Turtle Island.

Then the third great shaking of the Earth came – the great destruction.

I remember my great fear in those three days of darkness. During that time, I remembered the words of the Elders at the gatherings. I remembered the prophecies they shared and the certitude they had that these days of peace would one day come.

I remembered Black Elk’s vision and his prayer when he returned to Harney Peak as a very old man.

"Here at the center of the world where you took me when I was young and taught me: here, old I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!

Again, perhaps for the last time on this Earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some root of the Sacred Tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds! Hear me, that they may once again go back to the Sacred Hoop, and the Good Red Road, the shielding tree.

In sorrow, I am sending a feeble voice, O six powers of the world. Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again. O make my people live."

I am here speaking to you today as an Old One because that great prayer was answered. The Sacred Tree does live, flower, and bloom. Here we sit, all nations as one nation, hoops in many hoops. We the Native peoples of the Earth have walked the Good Red Road from North to South and from West to East to bring back to all humanity how to live the sacred spiritual teachings.

I have lived to see this great peace unfold, I have lived long enough to see the Indian Nations of the world invited to the table of the United Nations, from which they were first excluded. I have lived long enough to see the coming together of all the nations of the Earth into one hoop of many hoops.

We the grandmothers are the image of Mother Earth. We give life and strength and are the foundation of the family. When our voices were not heard at the table of nations, there was no heartbeat of love by which to bind together the sons and daughters of Mother Earth.

I have lived long enough to see this day, on which the wisdom of the grandmothers and their knowledge of the ancient life is once again being shared with all the human race.

This is a great day to have lived to share with you."

~ Susan Stark Christianson has attended many Spiritual Unity of Tribes gatherings and spoken with tribal elders regarding native prophecy. She is an award-winning former journalist currently living in Juneau, Alaska and Birch Bay, Washington. She is a former Deputy Director of Communications for the State of Alaska Office of the Governor. Creating "The Wisdom of the Grandmothers" was the fulfillment of a one of Susan's life dreams. It was also life-changing, providing her with the opportunity to meet and be inspired by the incredible mothers and grandmothers she met along the journey.