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Science and the Myth of Progress
Treasures of the World's Religions
Exploring "Timeless in Time" - a biography of Sri Ramana Maharshi
World Wisdom's Spiritual Classics series
The Perennial Philosophy Series
Books about Buddhism
Every Branch In Me: Who are we as "human" beings?
What are the "Foundations of Christian Art?"
Ernest Thompson Seton explains "The Gospel of the Redman"
The Sacred Worlds Series
Slideshows
  Paul Goble's World: Native Americans' relationship to all created beings Back to the List of Slideshows
From the story of Whistling Elk, a traditional Plains Indian story as related in All Our Relatives
    
Slide 8 of 10




WHISTLING ELK WAS WOUNDED IN BATTLE. His friends brought him home
and laid him in his tipi. The medicine men did what they could to cure his wounds, but everyone feared Whistling Elk did not have many more days to live.
     As he reclined on his bed, close to death, a kingfisher flew in at the tipi door and perched on the top of the backrest above his head. Uttering his loud rattling call, the kingfisher told him: “Whistling Elk, get up now! Go to
the stream. Do as I do: dive down into the water!”
     Whistling Elk obeyed the kingfisher, rose from his bed, walked down to the river, and dived in. His wound was cleansed, and soon after that he recovered.



"Long ago it was the cottonwood tree who taught us how to make our tipis, for the leaf is an exact pattern of the tipi, and this we learned when some of our old people were watching little children making play houses from these leaves. This too is a good example of how much grown men and women may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss."
Black Elk, Lakota



"Some people may think that human beings were the first to dance, but I do not think so. I believe that the birds danced fi rst. I have seen the prairie chicken hold dances as orderly and as well organized as I have seen humans hold."
Standing Bear, Lakota
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