Hehaka Pejuta

Good morning relatives

It is a fortunate day. I am in South Dakota this morning. I was given the opportunity to make a short trip out to Wyoming and the Black Hills   It was very good for my heart and body to come here for this short visit.  It is a good reminder to remember that no matter how much I love my home it is healthful to go and see the medicine places that make up this great country that we live in.

Traveling through the hills on motorcycle right now is like being in the boundary waters right before fishing opener.  The motorcyclists are gathering and riding everywhere. I met an older man from Toronto. He was so enjoying Custer national park and the beauty of the hills. He said he was going to come back. It cheered me.  In all the midst of the terrible things people from our realms of power and priveledge have done to make us as a people so unpalatable to other countries here was a man from Grandmothers Land happy to be here.  All around the roads and trails where I was graeful to travel there were very healthy crops of Hekaka Pejuta / Elks Medicine growing. It was wonderful to chew some of this medicine that was growing ont eh mountain where Black Elk had his great vision. Elks medicine is about love. The Elk brings love and stamina to its people there was massive amounts of it blossoming here which tells me relatives that the Elk, the Earth Mother, the Wind, the Water all hear our cry for love our. Cry for healing and care amongst each other and with ourselves. It is a blessing straight out of the earth.
The sage is also crazy fragrant this year it is growing everywhere. Sage is for clearing. Cleaning the heart space

I am thinking this am that it is important to clean our heart space and our mind space of the negativity the failures the fears that we have and perhaps carry around inside of us.  Even having been taught this by my elders and good teachers every morning relatives I struggle with my own tears and my own fear  every morning I must let them out.  I get up and prepare for the beginning of the day and I make cedar smoke, sage, and tobacco prayer. Sometimes with the pipe some times just a pinch in my hand and if I can let my heart go I cry. Always there are tears as I release what was or what pushes at me into what I call the "get along with yourself now" space.  There is so much judgement in our lives. In my own cellular habits that I feel it trying to get me to hold onto that pain and fear. Why? So that I hold myself back from blossoming in the day. So that that old inertia of negativity that eventually culminates and rolls over the children at Lame Deer like a blanket of death dose not have to be caught up in our willing hands carried outside into the dawn and shaken snapped out like a sail to free those children to free that man from Toronto to free me and you.

Go out and shake your heart in the wind relatives. Give it a snap like an clean white, purple, green, mauve, or slate colored sheet fresh from scrubbing and airing. Shake it into the wind. She can accept and dissipate your fear as she has mine own.

Here in the Black Hills the smallest of the small is enduring in love and in joy.  I read that at the end of his life Black Elk said that he felt he was given a great vision and that he did not do all he can to make it true in this reality. Today here in the land where he stood so long ago amongst a time of transition, death, rebirth, confusion and spiritual glory in a time that is exactly like this time now. He stood and did all he could. Today I offer cedar, sage, tobacco and elks medicine for Black Elk. I ask him to snap his soul in the wind and to let go of that fear and negativity. I invite him to live his vision now and I say it is never to late Grandfather. Today I see your medicine all over those hills in the rose quartz that runs under them I see the love from which you were made blossoming through the medicine that grows and I ask you to let go as we all must each day of what was or was not and be be with me Grandfather be with yourself

With love from one Elk to another  be with love

Best to you this day relatives
Love love love
Heyhaka WinWicakpi Zi