元族道

『原住民之道』

Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.

The first peace, which is the most important,

is that which comes within the souls of people

when they realize their relationship,

their oneness with the universe and all its powers,

and when they realize that at the centre of the universe

dwells the Great Spirit,

and that this centre is really everywhere,

it is within each of us.

All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.

I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.*

The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.

We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.

一 Heȟáka Sápa, wičháša wakȟáŋ ("medicine man, holy man"), heyókȟa of the Oglala Lakȟóta people

* DeMallie, Raymond J (1984). The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's teachings given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1664-5. From Black Elk Speaks, a 1932 book by John G. Neihardt, an American poet and writer, that relates the story of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota medicine man. Black Elk spoke in Lakota and Black Elk's son, Ben Black Elk, who was present during the talks, translated his father's words into English. Neihardt made notes during these talks which he later used as the basis for his book. The prominent psychologist Carl Jung read the book in the 1930s and urged its translation into German; in 1955, it was published as Ich Rufe Mein Volk (I Call My People)