The book Black Elk Speaks was written in the early 1930's by author John G. Neihardt, after interviewing the medicine man named Black Elk. Neihardt was already a published writer, and prior to this particular narrative he was at work publishing a collection of poems titled Cycle of the West. Although he was initially seeking infor- mation about a peculiar Native American religious movement that occurred at the end of the 19th century for the …
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…prospered here at the expense of the land. Possibly, Black Elk was acting out of prophesy when he suggested that he needed to tell his story, for he knew what the white men would eventually mean to the health of the land. Black Elk knew that only when the white man acknowledged what he had done to the land and her people, would wisdom ever shine on his nation as it did on the Sioux.