Hozho Speaks in Blanding, Utah 

Have you ever gone through the boarding school system? If so, which school did you go through? Much appreciate your insight and support! Ahe' hee

Much appreciate your support and comments for Mr. Long's series. Ahe' hee

Ahe' hee for watching Mr. Long's series

🤙🏾 ahe' hee for watching Clayton's video

Sorry to hear you're not close to your siblings anymore. Glad to read that speaking Dine is still with you. Have a great week and Ahe' hee for your continuing support

"The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which he sees all things, and through which we see him. It is from this center that true peace derives. It is the peace the comes when cosmos and heart/psyche are reunited. It is the first peace and the real peace.. There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men. Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit 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 the Spirit intends. Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking. Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world…It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt. Until he was killed at the Soldiers’ Town on White River, he was wounded only twice, once by accident and both times by some one of his own people when he was not expecting trouble and was not thinking; never by an enemy. They used to say that he carried a sacred stone with him, like one he had seen in some vision, and that when he was in danger, the stone always got heavy and protected him somehow. When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the west, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm. 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. After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked. The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me. I looked about me once again, and suddenly the dancing horses without number changed into animals of every kind and into all the fowls that are, and these fled back to the four quarters of the world from whence the horses came, and vanished. You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me. And when I breathed, my breath was lightning. Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers. And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me. I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured, it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish. 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. The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children. Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. 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 had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it. I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself. I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me. I know now what this meant, that the bison were the gift of a good spirit and were our strength, but we should lose them, and from the same good spirit we must find another strength. It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real." Heȟáka Sápa, aka Black Elk, was a wičháša wakȟáŋ and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota people. He was a second cousin of the war leader Crazy Horse and fought with him in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He survived the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.

During the 1860s, Black Elk was born into a lineage of medicine men. In 1872, atop Harney’s Peak in the Black Hills, he was favored by a great vision. Nine years later, his powers were confirmed and he became a healer and great medicine man at a very young age. Curious about Christianity, he soon began to watch and study it. He learned about St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and in 1885, he signed a petition supporting the cause for her canonization (declaration as a saint). The next year with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, he went to Europe where he saw Christianity in action. In 1904, while praying through yuwipi for a boy’s healing, he met a Jesuit who invited him to study Christianity at Holy Rosary Mission, near Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He did so, and was baptized Nicholas William on December 6th, the Feast of St. Nicholas, which provided him a Christian model of charity that resonated with his role as a traditional spiritual leader. Believing that Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit, had called him to greater service, he became an authentic Christian who intertwined Lakota and Catholic practices. He prayed regularly with his rosary and pipe and participated in mass and Lakota ceremonies, but he never practiced yuwipi again. In 1907, the Jesuits appointed him a catechist (teacher of Christian faith) because of his enthusiasm and excellent memory for learning Scripture and Church teachings. Like St. Paul, he traveled widely, he preached and told stories, and he wrote pastoral letters in Lakota with Bible verses on good Christian living that newspapers published for the people to read. Oftentimes he taught the faith by narrating a published picture map called the “Two Roads” (pictorial ladder catechism), which featured the “Good Red Road” and the “Black Road of Difficulties” in colorful graphics. As an elder, he continued his advocacy for Jesus Christ and Lakota heritage. From his office, in the St. Agnes Church parish hall in Manderson on the Pine Ridge Reservation, he served as a catechist, but with less mobility. Today, that hall is named “Black Elk Hall” in his honor. During the summer months of 1927 to 1946, he narrated demonstrations of traditional Lakota life and ceremonies at a Black Hills tourist attraction. In 1930-1931 and 1947-1949 respectively, John G. Neihardt and Joseph Epes Brown interviewed him for Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux and The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Sacred Rites of the Oglala Sioux, two books with glimpses of his Two Roads and Black Hills narrations. Black Elk had a series of visions during a dance - more than a decade before his conversion - in which he saw a man “with wounds in the palms of his hands.” He said: “Once more, I saw the sacred tree all full of leaves and blooming. Against the tree was a man standing with arms held wide in front of him. I looked hard at him and could not tell what people he came from. He was not ‘wasi’chu’ [non-Indian] and he was not Indian. His hair was long and hanging loose… his body began to change and became very beautiful with all colors of light… He spoke like singing: ‘My life is such that all earthly beings and growing things belong to me. Your father the Great Spirit has said this. And you too must say this." Just before his passing on August 19, 1950, he predicted that it would be marked by a sign. On the night of his wake at St. Agnes Church, the northern lights danced overhead with unprecedented brilliance. As a catechist, he was credited with leading over 400 native people to baptism, and since then, his books inspired many people. But he was not a stereotypical mystic, and only recently, most people have just begun to rediscover his complex dual commitment to Christianity and Lakota tradition. Black Elk married his first wife, Katie War Bonnet, in 1892. She was a converted Catholic, and all three of their children were baptized. Katie died in 1903, and Black Elk converted to Catholicism the following year, christened under the Christian name Nicholas. Black Elk’s cause for canonization began in 2017 and is now at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Not all Lakota fully support Black Elk’s possible sainthood. A good percentage do, many in a straightforward Catholic way. Some add a particular Lakota twist, such as in relation to the mountain that now bears Black Elk’s name. A two-year campaign to change the highest peak in the Black Hills to Black Elk Peak was finalized in 2016. The catalyst, Lakota Catholic elder Basil Brave Heart, sees the canonization and the name change as two sides of the same living spiritual presence: Black Elk’s vision of the sacred tree extending out into the world. Declaring Black Elk a saint is not just to rubberstamp what happened in the past but is an event that changes the church and the whole world: a deep affirmation of Native ways that will help bring us back to our spiritual center and a step toward righting the wrongs that structure our world. Walking the Good Red Road ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-v1sAiX8_-nM.html

Your comments never seem to fail Chuck, much appreciate your on going support!

Shi'cheii ran away from boarding school twice. He ran past NM and stayed in CA as a dishwasher, age 12/13, became a baker then a welder for Boeing. Everyone has their own motivations. 🤙🏾

I ran away too ...I still have nightmares from those evil minds ..

What's scary about Dulce?