Black Elk Speaks DB#2

I really can’t lie, I really had a lot of trouble understanding Black Elk Speaks. His visions made little sense to me and I had trouble following what he was talking about constantly. However, I can understand a power struggle when I read about one. “It is from understanding that power comes” (Black Elk 29). It’s true. Even from where I’m sitting here reading, this statement holds true. I had no power in this reading initially. I blindly grasped at some form of understanding as I tried to make sense of his visions and anecdotes. I think I found something, though. And from this, I have the power to explain my thoughts and what I took from the reading. I have the power to analyze the meaning behind the words and find deeper connections as well. Black Elk explains how “a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see” (28).

So, he sets out to perform this vision and also to uphold the values and traditions of his family and tribe. But in doing so, he clashes with other groups. I think we have all read or seen this sort of clashing before. The clashing of nature versus industry, “savages” versus “whites,” civilization versus wilderness. Pocahontas was one such story in which the Native Americans and English settlers fought over merely differing lifestyles. There is so much that both groups could learn from each other, but because of the power struggle and the desire to win, death and war seem to be the only paths. He sees the slaughter of the bison as “throwing part of the power of [his] people away” (32). Much of the fighting in these stories comes from misunderstanding. It seems very silly to me. Black Elk did not convey to the Wasichus that they were destroying something sacred to his people and merely set out to meet them with force. Similarly, the Wasichus slaughtered the women and children of the natives without cause or provocation. Power, in these situations, just means the failure to understand each other and the constant desire to hold the upper card.

It was the same in Avatar as well. The natives saw the beauty in nature and all living things, whereas the newcomers acted much like the new ways of Black Elk’s tribe: “They were traveling the black road, everybody for himself and with little rules of his own, …” (31). The clashing came from the misunderstanding of both sides and the fact that both wanted the land to do with it what they believed to be right. The description of Black Elk’s vision seemed especially similar to the way the natives in Avatar lived: “the holy tree was dying, and the circle of the men and women holding hands was like the sacred hoop that should have power to make the tree to bloom again” (32). They use their unity and nature to cure others whereas the newcomers have no understanding of the planet and merely use the resources they know. So, the disrespect that both parties have for each others’ beliefs is probably also a contributing factor in the clashing of both sides.

However, the natives also seem to lose something precious in all these circumstances: Pocahontas, Black Elk Speaks, and Avatar. They have a beautiful connection with nature and live in harmony, but they lose this sense of innocence because of what is brought to them. In the end, Black Elk ends up taking “a gun with [him]” to meet his enemy. They use horses that were brought by newcomers and slowly lose their former harmony. I find that this power struggle is what destroys their way of life as well as harmony amongst differing groups.