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Originally Posted by jgaiser
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Black Elk Speaks was one that I read in university and really enjoyed. I did reread it many years later and still enjoyed it. I have the pbook version and see that it is on amazon, but I would prefer the pbook version myself.
Spoiler:
The famous life story of the Lakota healer and visionary, Nicholas Black Elk.
Widely hailed as a spiritual classic, this inspirational and unfailingly powerful story reveals the life and visions of the Lakota healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and the tragic history of his Sioux people during the epic closing decades of the Old West. In 1930, the aging Black Elk met a kindred spirit, the famed poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The Lakota elder chose Neihardt to share his visions and life with the world. Neihardt understood and today Black Elk is known to all.
Black Elk’s remarkable great vision came to him during a time of decimation and loss, when outsiders were stealing the Lakotas’ land, slaughtering buffalo, and threatening their age-old way of life. As Black Elk remembers all too well, the Lakotas, led by such legendary men as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, fought unceasingly for their freedom, winning a world-renowned victory at the Little Bighorn and suffering unspeakable losses at Wounded Knee.
Black Elk Speaks however is more than the epic history of a valiant Native nation. It is beloved as a spiritual classic because of John Neihardt’s sensitivity to Black Elk’s resounding vision of the wholeness of earth, her creatures, and all of humanity. Black Elk Speaks is a once-in-a-lifetime read: the moving story of a young Lakota boy before the reservation years, the unforgettable history of an American Indian nation, and an enduring spiritual message for us all.
The premier edition features the first-ever annotated edition of Black Elk’s story, done by renowned Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie, the original Standing Bear illustrations and new commentary on them, new maps of the world of Black Elk Speaks, and a revised index.
Another one that I read in university and was moved by the story was the story of
Ishi - "In the early 1900s a small band of California Indians in the Yahi tribe lived in concealment, resisting the fate that had all but wiped out their people -- violent death by the invading gold seekers and settlers. In time, members of the small group died, until there remained a single survivor -- the man who became known as Ishi. This book tells the haunting, heroic story of Ishi -- the boy, the man, the lone survivor of his tribe.". I read another version, but see that the below is on
amazon.
Spoiler:
ISHI in Two Worlds tells the true story of the man known as the "last wild Indian in North America." His sudden appearance in 1911 stunned the country. His tribe was considered extinct, destroyed in bloody massacres during the 1860s and 70s.
1911 was a pivotal moment in American history, and the lowest point for Native Americans. The west had been won, and the country now spread from sea to sea. Contact with white men's diseases and violence had reduced their numbers from over ten million to less than three hundred thousand. Geronimo had surrendered twenty five years before. In California, there were only fifty thousand Indians alive. Most were living on reservations or had been assimilated into the general population.
Yet here was one survivor, the last of his tribe, who refused to surrender. He had been hiding for forty years. When Ishi appeared, newspaper headlines across the country proclaimed the discovery of the Wild Man, the last Stone Age Man in North America.
For Alfred Kroeber, an ambitious young anthropologist at UC Berkeley, this was great news. He had been searching for years to find unacculturated Indians so that he could document true aboriginal life in America. He arranged for Ishi to come to the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Ishi only lived four more years, but during his brief stay he transformed the people around him. His dignity and sense of self, his tireless dedication to telling his stories and showing his way of life, and his lack of bitterness towards the people who had destroyed his own, amazed and impressed everyone who met him. Because of Ishi's courage and generosity, and Kroeber's meticulous notes and recordings, we have a glimpse of life in this country before the white man. Ishi embodied the entire history of Native Americans: their life before contact, the tragedy of their destruction, their refusal to disappear, their determination to carry their culture into the Twentieth Century.
Alfred Kroeber's wife, Theodora, brought Ishi's story to the modern public in 1961 in her vivid book, Ishi in Two Worlds: The Story of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Its enormous popularity led to two more books by Mrs. Kroeber: Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History, and the children's book, Ishi, Last of his Tribe. These books have been in print for three decades and have been translated into sixteen languages. An award-winning film ISHI THE LAST YAHI is available on amazon.com and from
www.jedriffefilms.com