Meanwhile, two extraordinary personalities in my university town, Native American studies pioneer Raymond DeMallie and “perennialist” thinker Frithjof Schuon, took up the quest to identify the “real” Black Elk. A New Age movement arose that simultaneously honored and exploited indigenous traditions. Nagging questions about Neihardt’s role in the composition of the book took on new meaning during the pan-Indian cultural renaissance that led to the Wounded Knee standoff of 1973. Did Neihardt distort the words of Black Elk, privileging an overly romantic understanding of Lakota theology? Why was Black Elk’s twentieth-century experience ignored? Was this a textbook example of white appropriation of Native national treasure? In the course of conversations with colleagues in the graduate student lounge and the usual circuit of after-hours watering holes, I became aware of a larger context challenging my originally naïve approach to the text. We used the 1972 edition of the book, the version that cemented the text’s status as a youth culture classic and, in the words of the provocative Vine Deloria, author of God is Red, as a “North American bible of all tribes.” Devouring the book just weeks before I guided a lecture hall of undergraduates through its mysteries, I was struck by what millions of other readers-from William Least Heat-Moon to Carl Jung-had already discovered: the quiet dignity of its uncommon perspective, the moving drama of its countercultural storyline, and the haunting beauty of the speaker’s sometimes other-worldly voice.Īt the time, the question of the book’s integrity and point of view was stirring controversy among a small circle of experts and an expanding fellowship of enthusiasts. As a graduate assistant at a large Midwestern state university in the mid-1980s, I co-taught an introductory course on Native American religions with my faculty mentor. The book is based on interviews conducted by the poet John G. The first great book to give shape to my pedagogical repertoire was Black Elk Speaks, the “as-told-to” account of a Lakota holy man’s experiences leading up to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.
Through multiple readings and repeated use, this increasingly personal canon has profoundly informed the way I perceive my own life as an unfolding story of blessed surprise and continual conversion. Over the years, I invite class after class to submit to the disciplines of close reading and self-critical reflection, hoping that at least a few students will recognize the condition of their own lives in the mirror of these texts and fully enroll in the extracurricular adventure of the spiritual life.
In such texts you encounter remarkable persons speaking -struggling- in intimate tones about the most urgent matters of their lives and times. First-person narratives such as Augustine’s Confessions and Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness have become more than reliable syllabus workhorses. Certainly the Bible is on the list, along with other volumes from the global sacred library and a durable set of modern essays, including Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” and King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Autobiographical texts especially stand out.
As I began my fourth decade of teaching college, I took a look back at the texts that have accompanied me in the classroom semester after semester and identified definite patterns of influence and inspiration.
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