Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
This was another book I read for a Native American literature class.
Neihardt didn't reveal that Black Elk converted to Christianity through the influence of Jesuit priests and he forgave all his enemies.
Neihardt didn't reveal that Black Elk converted to Christianity through the influence of Jesuit priests and he forgave all his enemies.
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Good for Americans to read- more spirituality-based than I anticipated, but alot of food for thought. This makes for good discussion in historiography-circles, especially, since the whole thing is kind of fourth-hand information, tens of years later. But the whole notion of historical memory has raised alot of questions in recent books, so nothing's new. This is also a good introduction to the story of the Lakota, Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, the Ghost Dance, and more, for people without whose textbooks skimmed over this ugly part of American history.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
A very good read but given the various comments and insights on the way John Neihardt edited the narrative, I'll probably also read The Sixth Grandfather to get more of Black Elk and less of John Neihardt.
informative
slow-paced
I enjoyed this book. I found it kind of difficult when I was reading it to figure out what was actually Black Elk, and what was Neihardt, although the editor had thankfully given little footnotes on the side. While I think this was a powerful book, and very interesting to read, the lack of any true authenticity bothered me quite a lot. I didn't really understand why Neihardt couldn't just tell us what Black Elk said. It was obvious to me that good parts of the book were Black Elk's words filtered through a European-American consciousness in such a way that they would be understandable to European-Americans. And this bugged me, some places more than others.
Still, looking at the time when it was written, I think the interesting thing of the book is not what it tells you of Black Elk (of which most words were to me suspect because of Neihardt's 'filter'), but of what it tells you of Neihardt and the mainstream society of the time.
This is not a book to read if you want an accurate, authentic autobiography of Native Americans, but it is an interesting book of Native American/European-American fusion for the time period.
Still, looking at the time when it was written, I think the interesting thing of the book is not what it tells you of Black Elk (of which most words were to me suspect because of Neihardt's 'filter'), but of what it tells you of Neihardt and the mainstream society of the time.
This is not a book to read if you want an accurate, authentic autobiography of Native Americans, but it is an interesting book of Native American/European-American fusion for the time period.
I've been meaning to read this book for many years, and it lived up to its place in American history. This is the story of the Lakota Sioux in the last half of the 19th century, as told in the first person by the elderly Black Elk, a visionary and healer, to a non-native writer in the early 1930s. From his childhood in the 1860s, when he had his first vision, through the terrible years of the murders of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the numerous broken treaties and that eventually destroyed the native tribes of the plains, Black Elk speaks in plain language of the hopes, dreams, lives and deaths of his people. I wish this book was required reading for every American high school student, so that we would better understand the depth of the tragedy of our country's treatment of the native peoples.