Black Elk

September 26, 2016
Jackson (Atlantic Fever) panoramically renders a narrative as majestic as the American West in this fine account of the life of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota holy man. With compassion and clarity, Jackson portrays Black Elk as a man haunted by his inability to make sense of the “Great Vision” that came to him as a child. Born in 1863 to a family of medicine men, he grew up during a time of declining fortunes for his people. Black Elk’s life provides a window on major events in the post–Civil War West: Red Cloud’s War, the battle of Little Bighorn, and the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Through those years, Black Elk sharpened his capacity for visions and cultivated his healing powers, always searching for ways to help the Oglala and even working with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. All of this is fascinating, but Jackson isn’t content to recount a familiar story. He brilliantly frames it with an incisive discussion of the creation of John Neihardt’s 1932 as-told-to book, Black Elk Speaks. Jackson digs into Native American culture and what it meant for Black Elk to be a holy man, especially in light of his 1904 conversion to Catholicism. He has produced a major contribution to Native American history. Maps & illus.

Traber Burns provides a narrative performance that resides somewhere between that of a devoted professor and a wise storyteller. That's fitting, because this is a deep, detailed historical document. The stories found here are many, but their overall resonance is important, and relevant to our understanding of the American West. The audiobook tells the story of Black Elk, the Native American whose life rose to wide prominence in BLACK ELK SPEAKS. However, this audiobook is the most definitive work chronicling Black Elk's life, which led him through many historical events, some violent (consider the passage where Black Elk takes his first scalp, or the battles fought against Custer), until he took the role of holy man in his later years. S.P.C. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine