Parenting & Family Quote by Black Elk

Black Elk flips the usual hierarchy of wisdom on its head, not as a sentimental compliment to childhood but as a theological warning to adults drunk on their own certainty. In his framing, “grown men” aren’t merely older; they’re obstructed. Age accumulates habits, status, and stories we tell ourselves about what’s real. Children, by contrast, are described as “pure” in the older sense: less divided, less invested in defending an ego, more permeable to instruction. The point isn’t that kids are innocent angels; it’s that they haven’t yet learned the sophisticated evasions adults mistake for maturity.

The phrase “Therefore” matters. This isn’t a soft life lesson; it’s a causal chain in a sacred worldview: purity creates receptivity, and receptivity creates access. “The Great Spirit may show to them many things” suggests knowledge as revelation rather than conquest. That’s a direct rebuke to modern, extractive notions of learning where information is taken, owned, and weaponized. In Black Elk’s universe, insight is granted, and it can be withheld.

The context sharpens the edge. Black Elk lived through the violent compression of Lakota life: broken treaties, boarding schools designed to sever Indigenous children from language and ceremony, and the forced remaking of social order. Invoking children here carries double weight. It defends a spiritual epistemology under siege while quietly indicting “older people” (including colonial authorities and, potentially, compromised elders) for missing what’s in front of them: that survival depends on humility, attention, and the ability to be taught again.