Black Elk’s Gift of Healing

Damian Costello

Basil Brave Heart walked along the edge of the frozen lake with the measured gait of an elder. A few inches of snow covered the path and Brave Heart used his staff to steady himself. He stopped under the large rock spires that stand guard on the north side of the lake, which gave the mountain beyond one of its original names, Hiŋháŋ Káǧa Pahá, “Making of the Sacred Owl.” It had been a bright, clear day on the drive up from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, with mountain shining over the road. Now snow clouds covered the sun and hid the peak.

Brave Heart raised his staff and silently prayed, acknowledging in turn each of the six directions as he prepared to send up his voice. This mountain is a holy place. Crazy Horse fasted four days and nights in this area and received his vision, though only a few today know exactly where. Nicholas Black Elk, the Lakota holy man and Catholic catechist made famous by Black Elk Speaks, was brought to the peak in his Great Vision. Every spring, the Hehan Kaga Paka ceremony is performed to welcome back the Thunderbeings. In recent years, this mountain has been the epicenter of a spiritual shift in Native America that continues to radiate out across the globe, two waves of a single living spirit that Brave Heart has come to honor and bring together.

For one-hundred-sixty-one years the mountain had been called Harney Peak in honor of General William S. Harney, a prominent leader in the U.S. military campaign against the Lakota. In 1855 he was in command of the 600 U.S. Army troops who attacked a Lakota village on Blue Water Creek in Nebraska Territory, killing 86, half of them women and children. The Lakota had always objected to naming one of the sacred Black Hills after an enemy but no one ever thought it could change. It was no more possible than erasing the faces blasted out of the stone a few miles away.

A couple years prior, something unexpected occurred. Brave Heart couldn’t sleep. He picked up a book he had been reading. He read an account of the massacre and began to cry. His tears were those of sadness but also prayer, for in Lakota the word for “to cry,” ceya, is also the root of the word for prayer, “when the whole body pushes up sacred water that emerges in your tears.” Overwhelmed, Brave Heart lit some sage to purify himself. As the smoke filled the room, the spirit of Black Elk came to him, not in a dream but while Brave Heart was conscious, in the presence of the Spirits. He wasn’t thinking of Black Elk or changing the name of the mountain peak. “People always ask me ‘How did you come up with Black Elk?’” Brave Heart said. “I had nothing to do with it. It came from the Great Spirit.”

Brave Heart knew the mountain should be renamed after Black Elk but was unsure how this would work. He knew the first step he needed to take was to get the support of the Black Elk family and pray with the Sacred Pipe. He reached out to the Black Elk Family, who sent Myron Wayne Pourier, a great-great grandson of Black Elk. When Pourier heard Brave Heart’s plan, he supported it and brought out one of Black Elk’s pipes. They smoked together, praying to “Tunkasila, the Great Spirit,” Brave Heart remembered, “that we embrace the sacred and make the effort to change the name of the mountain but leave the outcome up to the Creator.”

Brave Heart proposed the name change to South Dakota Board on Geographic Names. A series of public hearings across the state brought out strong feelings. Many opponents saw it as another example of an over-reaching culture of political correctness trying to rewrite history. There were differing opinions among the Lakota as some wanted to restore one of the original names for the mountain.

As time passed, however, support for the change grew. Real reconciliation occurred as descendants of victims of the Blue Water Massacre and descendants of General Harney met and joined the movement. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names stepped in and officially changed the name to Black Elk Peak on August 11, 2016. Many local politicians cried states’ rights and vowed to fight to the end. But without explanation, opposition simply melted away, something Brave Heart still does not believe. “We endured unbelievable pushback, criticism, and racist remarks, even from some elected officials.” The result was due to divine action, “the answer to many prayers.”

This was only one wave. As the name change of Black Elk Peak worked itself out, another movement regarding the legacy of Black Elk began to gather momentum. In March 2016, a group of Black Elk’s descendants, led by grandson George Looks Twice, submitted a petition requesting the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rapid City nominate Black Elk for the cause for canonization. Bishop Robert Gruss reviewed the case over the next year and brought it to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In November 2017, they unanimously approved Black Elk’s cause, moving it to the Vatican for the next step of the process and making Black Elk “Servant of God.”

Globally, the news of Black Elk’s possible canonization generated even more attention than the renaming of the peak. Many people were simply unaware that Black Elk lived more than half his life as a prominent Catholic leader credited with bringing 400 people into the Church. Others view the Catholic Church and Black Elk as contradictory symbols, one of colonialism and destruction and the other of Indigenous cultural revival and new age healing.

Not for Brave Heart. Though not without difficulty, he has always lived the two ways, Lakota and Catholic. His early life was key. Brave Heart grew up in his grandparents’ log cabin, where Lakota was the language and traditional spiritual teachings imbued daily life. Though government prohibition pushed traditional ceremonial life underground, his grandparents regularly brought him to ceremony. For Brave Heart, the Lakota Way was as normal as the air we breathe, one of the few remaining elders who can say that. 

Likewise, Brave Heart first encountered Catholicism not in opposition to the Lakota world but within it. His paternal grandfather, William Red Hair, lived near Holy Rosary Mission and had good relations with the Jesuits. In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre, Red Hair hitched up his wagon and went to the mission. He set up the family’s tent there to protect the missionaries. “The values of the Pipe motivated him,” Brave Heart explained, “It was an act of compassion. He just didn’t want any more blood on the warriors’ hands, or the religious to be hurt.”  

Brave Heart’s earliest memories of the Catholic Way are of Red Hair’s cabin during the Great Depression. One of Jesuits, Joseph A. Zimmerman - “a good man,” Brave Heart remembered - would visit Red Hair’s house to discuss spirituality. Brave Heart looked forward to the visits because he would get bread to eat while the two elders talked. His grandfather had a statue of Christ on a table and behind it was a bundle with his pipe in it. Red Hair and Zimmerman would discuss the congruity of the Lakota and Catholic Ways. Red Hair told stories about White Buffalo Woman, how she blew her sacred breath, Woniya Wakan, on the pipe before she gave it to the people. Zimmerman would tell stories of Christ, of how He blew His sacred breath on His disciples and gave them the gift of Woniya Wakan, the Lakota translation for the Holy Spirit.

Brave Heart was confused by one thing. “Why didn’t you tell the Jesuit about the pipe behind the statue?” he asked. “They aren’t ready to understand yet,” his grandfather replied. “They will one day.” But Red Hair was ready. “I have deep respect for this man [Zimmerman]. The teachings of White Buffalo Woman and Christ are the same. I want to find out more about the Eucharist. It seems to be what we do every day.” Eucharist, of course, means “an act of thanksgiving.” Red Hair ended up becoming Catholic and continued to practice his Lakota Way.

The integral spirituality of his early home life cultivated in Brave Heart a “deep alliance with divinity.” Residential school ruptured the seamless spiritual life his grandparents sustained and was “very traumatic to my whole being.” Combat in the Korean War led to PTSD and alcoholism. After years of self-medication he finally bottomed out before clawing his way back - or was lifted up. He shared his sobriety by becoming a substance abuse counselor. He received the call to become a traditional healer and after a long period of resistance accepted it. For decades he has brought healing to others as a substance abuse counselor, Sun Dance Intercessor, and a teacher of the Lakota Way.

In the process Brave Heart has integrated the Lakota and Catholic ways on a deep theological level. Some may not notice at first, given his openness about Catholicism’s ambiguous history in Indian Country and his bluntness about how Christians often fail to live up to Divine principles. They might even be thrown off by his interest in the non-canonical Gospels. Yet Brave Heart’s seemingly unconventional spirituality comes not out of dismissal but deep, even mystical reverence for what he calls the Christ principles of compassion and forgiveness, something that he sees in the witness of his spiritual ancestor. Black Elk himself integrated the two traditions and lived an extraordinary life of holiness, modeling the Christ principles - not just a model but also a continuing living presence. The name change of the mountain was not of human invention but the result of an unexpected manifestation of the Spirits. To return again to Black Elk Peak, like in September 2016, was to affirm what had emerged from Black Elk’s living presence in wopila, the giving of thanks.

But prayer is more. For traditional Lakota, the Spirit World is ever-present, very close to us and separated by only a thin veneer. Ritual and ceremonial prayer penetrates that veneer and opens a door where we and the world can be changed. Thus, prayer on this winter day was not only thanksgiving but also to affect this spiritual movement already in process: the name change extending outward in the form of the cause for canonization in the Catholic Church.

This event shaping can be seen in the life of Black Elk. After telling author John Neihardt his Great Vision in 1931, Black Elk returned to the peak to honor the Spirits that had once brought him there. He dressed in red as he had been in his vision and brought his pipe to send up his voice. Black Elk told Neihardt that if he had any power left there would be rain or thunder. It was a cloudless summer day, but after Black Elk prayed, a small cloud appeared and scattered raindrops joined his tears of prayer. In the Lakota way, the prayer, tears, and rain were not coincidental but the work of the Spirits and integral to Black Elk’s voice going out in the words of Black Elk Speaks. Black Elk’s voice lived on and spread throughout the world.

For Brave Heart, to pray at Black Elk Peak that day was to join Black Elk’s living presence and bring together the two movements—the renaming of the mountain and Black Elk’s cause for sainthood—that they may have effect. “The renaming of Black Elk Peak is becoming much more than a geographic name change,” Brave Heart said, “It is becoming a spiritual sculpturing.” Black Elk’s flowering tree of his Great Vision, “the tree of life, that will shelter and prosper the people that they might live, is going out through [the cause for canonization].” As a result, “we are seeing great healing for the world.” No matter what the intention, the cause is not a paternalistic pat on the head for an obedient underling. For Brave Heart, canonizing Nicholas Black Elk is an affirmation of the teachings of the Lakota Way. “Native American principles are a part of his sainthood.”

Brave Heart has been a healer for a long time. It is difficult work and Brave Heart has undergone more than his fair share of suffering, but that is how he feels a truly spiritual life should be lived. “It’s an ancient teaching,” he said, “That persons move through the challenges of life with forgiveness and compassion calibrated to higher vibration.” You can feel this when you talk to him. Brave Heart exudes an uncanny sense of youth, of not being near the end but poised at a beginning. That all he has done before is preparation for the work he was put on earth to do and that only now has its time arrived: joining in the work of the Creator acting through Black Elk’s living presence to bring healing to the Lakota people and the world as a whole.

A descendant of the commander of the U.S. Army forces at Wounded Knee would find him and seek healing. Pride in his military service and love of his fellow veterans would lead him to start the movement to revoke the 20 Medals of Honor given to soldiers at the massacre. And the July 3, 2020 flashpoint at Mount Rushmore would turn Brave Heart’s attention to the monument, which fittingly is really just a spur of Black Elk Peak.

That would happen in the next few years. This day, Basil raised his staff and silently prayed, acknowledging in turn each of the six directions. Time changed. Brave Heart sent up his voice in Lakota. When he finished praying a wind started blowing in from the North, as if Woniya Wakan was sanctifying and carrying his words out into the world, the same sacred breath that White Buffalo Woman breathed on the Sacred Pipe and Jesus Wanikiya breathed on his disciples. The eagle feathers on Brave Heart’s staff swung in the wind. The sun emerged through the clouds and lit up sparkles of ice in the sky. The wind stopped, leaving only silence.

It was finished. Brave Heart made the slow walk back to the car and began the journey home. The road was clear on the way up, but now the buffalo were out, licking the salt off the road. The clouds returned and covered the sun. At Hot Springs they opened up, and snow fell the entire drive back to Pine Ridge.

The next morning, it was time for another ceremony. Brave Heart drove the few miles to Holy Rosary Church, where Black Elk was baptized over a century ago. The pre-dawn glow fired the sky and redbrick of the church, the color heightened by the fresh blanket of snow.

Like most mornings, Brave Heart joined a small group for Yutapi wakan, the “sacred food” of daily mass, the act of thanksgiving that had intrigued his grandfather William Red Hair. Brave Heart was the first one to arrive. Today was special so when the priest arrived, Brave Heart joined him to prepare. After the penitential rite, Brave Heart led the aziliya, using an eagle feather to smudge each person with purifying sage smoke. During the petitions he prayed for the integrity of those who carry Black Elk’s vision out into the world. Brave Heart accompanied the Eucharistic prayer with the drum. You could hear the decades of Brave Heart’s ceremony and prayer in the beats—slow, low, deep beats whose sacred vibration did not overwhelm but only added to the words of consecration, the living heart of Wanikiya singing its love for all creation.

Mass finished and the small group broke into conversation as they left the church. Outside, dawn had broken. Children and staff were arriving for the school day. One by one, the churchgoers scattered to their work of the day. One visitor gave Brave Heart some tobacco. “Tókša [see you again],” Brave Heart said with the same glow that earlier lit the church and sky, and climbed into his pick-up. He turned northwest onto Highway 18, the direction where Black Elk Peak stood beyond the horizon.

Brave Heart drove home, ready to continue the work of healing

Damian Costello received his PhD in theological studies from the University of Dayton and specializes in the intersection of Catholic theology, Indigenous spiritual traditions, and colonial history. He is an international expert on the life and legacy of Nicholas Black Elk and the author of Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism. Costello's work is informed by five years of ethnographic work on the Navajo Nation. He served as an academic advisor, associate producer, and appeared in the documentary Walking the Good Red Road: Nicholas Black Elk's Journey to Sainthood, which aired on ABC affiliates in spring 2020. Costello is on the faculty of NAIITS, the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies, and is a founding member and the American co-chair of the Indigenous Catholic Research Fellowship (ICRF).