Nicholas Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota people, b. 1863, grew up in a world on the edge of destruction. At 9 he had a life-altering vision in which he traveled to the center of the universe and heard a call to save his people. At 18 he was initiated in his calling as a holy man.

Black Elk was present at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In 1890 he survived the massacre at Wounded Knee. “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, and the sacred tree is dead.”

In 1904 he became a Catholic and eventually a catechist. Opinions differ on the meaning of this conversion and what it meant for Black Elk to reconcile the different halves of his spiritual history. At 67 he described the vision of his youth in the classic “Black Elk Speaks.”