Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)
c. 1863–1950 · Indigenous Thought · Prominent
Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota holy man and healer. A vision took him as a child, six Grandfathers and a sacred hoop holding his nation whole, and he spent his life trying to enact it for the Lakota. Everything alive shares in Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, a sacred power running through all things and making them kin to one another. For decades he served the Catholic mission as a catechist.
Signature
The position Black Elk is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature
- strongly leans Harmony
- Time
- Cyclical Return / Sacred Time
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (100 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (15 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (6 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Nature
- strongly leans Harmony (100 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (20 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Black Elk refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism / Animism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Apocalyptic Renewal
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Time
- Cyclical Return / Sacred Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Prophetic / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Sacred Speech
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul / Ancestral Presence
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Primary Bond
- Nation / All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?