Politics & Power Quote by Black Elk

A promise and a burden hum beneath these words. They come from Black Elk’s Great Vision, received as a child and later narrated in Black Elk Speaks, where he is charged by the powers of the world to help his people. Nation here does not mean a modern state; it is the Lakota oyate, the people as a living circle bound to land, kin, and the more-than-human world. To say “make live” is not to found or conquer but to restore vitality, health, and right relations. Life is something to be tended, not seized.

The refrain belongs to a ceremonial context. In the vision Black Elk receives sacred gifts from the four directions and the six Grandfathers, each tied to water, plants, animals, and wind. He is told to use them so that the people might live. The words are vow and prayer at once: a declaration of responsibility to animate goodness in the collective body. Goodness is not moralism but balance, well-being, and harmony with the powers that sustain life.

The context makes the line more poignant. Black Elk lived through the shattering of the Lakota world: the tightening of the reservation system, the killing at Wounded Knee, the breaking of the sacred hoop. Against this history the promise to “make live” becomes a counter-history, a commitment to healing rather than revenge, ceremony rather than domination. He later led the Horse Dance, reenacting his vision to bring medicine to the people, embodying the idea that life is renewed through shared ritual and memory.

The sentence also resists narrow nationalism. A good nation is not good against others; it is good with others. In the vision the sacred hoop of the Lakota joins the hoop of all nations, human and other-than-human. The task is regenerative leadership: to receive power and turn it outward so that life increases. It is a simple grammar with a vast charge: make live.