“They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.”

— Black Elk

After joining the Wild West Show in 1886 and traveling to Chicago and New York to learn from the Whites, citing Neihardt in Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: I did not see anything to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus [Whites] did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation's hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.

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Black Elk 42

Oglala Lakota leader 1863–1950

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