Black Elk from "Black Elk Speaks" by John Neihardt and Christopher Sergel

I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; if it were only the story of my life, I would not tell it, for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? It is a story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one spirit. Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother? And are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?
I was not born till The-Moon-of-Popping-Trees in The-Winter-When-Four-Crows-Were-Killed, December 1863. You know me as Black Elk, a Medicine Man, a Lakota of our great Oglala Sioux. My father and his father before him bore this name, and the father of his father, so that I am the fourth to bear it. When I was young and could still hope, I heard a Voice call to me; the Voice was s beautiful nothing anywhere could keep from dancing. It said, "All over the Universe, they have finished a day of happiness; behold this day for it is yours to make." It said, "You shall stand upon the center of the world." And I asked where that might be, and the Voice said, "Anywhere I the center of the world."
And then . . . a vision was sent to me. In my vision, I reached the peak of the highest mountain in the Black Hills. Round about, beneath me, was the whole hoop of the world. From the rocks, colors flashed upward to become a rainbow in flame. From where I stood, I saw once more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw for I was seeing in a sacred manner. I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, and being endless, it was holy.
I was told that it was my mission to place a bright red stick at the living center of the nation's hoop and to make that red stick grow into a tree; a shielding tree that would bloom, a mighty flowering tree to shelter the children, a tree to protect The People, t save us from the winds!
But the mighty vision was given to a man too weak to use it. There is no shelter for the children; the winds are fighting like gunfire, like whirling smoke, like women and children wailing, like horses screaming all over the world. The hoop that once held our lives is broken; our people, scattered with no center. And our children do not sing. These children do not know the greatness and truth of our tradition. We must teach them. We will do it together--an Indian pictograph in which you finally see what else was killed at Wounded Knee. Some of us will put on the war bonnets of our great Chiefs; some, the uniforms to try to look like the bluecoat soldiers, or like the "important men" who come out here to rearrange our lives.
"The Winning of the West" . . . as experienced by the Indian People.