Nicholas Black Elk’s gift of sweetgrass

Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk, like all saintly people, gives gifts. Among the most important is a life well-lived. He was many things: second cousin of Crazy Horse, veteran of the Battle of Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee, and a Lakota holy man made famous by the book “Black Elk Speaks.” He also was a Catholic for almost a half-century, dedicated to telling the world about “Waníkiya,” the Lakota name for Jesus meaning “He who makes live.”

Black Elk’s life well-lived, at once deeply Catholic and completely indigenous, is a gift of healing for those still scarred by the false choice lurking in many missionary perspectives: to follow Christ you cannot be Indian. What many don’t see is the gift that Black Elk offers to those raised furthest from indigenous traditions. Our modern, urban ways have incredible benefits but carry unseen cultural loss.

Centuries of industrialization, modern science, secularization and migration have stripped many of traditions that connect them to the land. This is not just a cultural issue, but also a source of profound spiritual alienation. How many of us have the faith of Saint Francis to know the sun as brother and moon as sister? Who among us could comfortably sojourn in the wilderness for a couple of days, let alone 40 like Jesus?

Black Elk could and he brings that witness to the Church. During his decades of preaching the Gospel, he also was examining Lakota tradition. A couple of years before his death, he recorded his thoughts in the book “The Sacred Pipe.” Like Saint Thomas Aquinas with Aristotle, Black Elk re-read an ancient tradition in light of Jesus Christ. The result was a type of “Lakota Thomism,” a new way of understanding God, the Catholic faith and creation.

Take sweetgrass, a plant native to North America long used as incense. For Black Elk, sweetgrass is an offering to God whose fragrance “will spread throughout heaven and earth” and make “all things as relatives.” 

This very same species is native to Europe and was once strewn on Church doorsteps on saints’ days. The holiness of sweetgrass was such an accepted fact that even modern science records it: its scientific name, “Hierochloë odorata,” means “fragrant holy grass.” This small practice that we didn’t even know was lost, is the tip of a great cultural iceberg that once connected many to God through his creation.

Black Elk was a dedicated preacher, long-term missionary to other tribes and credited with bringing more than 400 people into the Church. Black Elk saw the power in praying in the Catholic way and did so until the end, whether saying the Rosary as he walked to church or singing his grandchildren to sleep with Latin chants from the high Mass.

But, Black Elk wanted to save the beauty of the old ways of praying as well. Lakota elder Basil Brave Heart said, “Indigenous principles are part of Black Elk’s sainthood.”

Damian Costello of Montpelier, Vt., holds a doctorate in theological studies from the University of Dayton. Catholic Star Herald is South Jersey’s official Catholic newspaper.