Posts Tagged ‘Arvol Looking Horse’

30
Mar

Winnipeg donates white bison calf to Sioux Valley Dakota Nation

   Posted by: admin    in bison, First Nations, Sioux


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The white bison donated to the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. (CBC photo)

The white bison donated to the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. (CBC photo)

Members of Manitoba’s Sioux Valley Dakota Nation say the gift of a white bison calf from the city of Winnipeg signifies “a new beginning.”

“I think that’s the easiest way to put it,” Chief Donna Elk tells the CBC, here, “to have this day to look back on and to remember, to say to our children that the white buffalo has come home.” (There’s a the video embedded in the link.)

The city donated two calves – one white and one brown from its Assiniboine Park Zoo, where they were sired by Blizzard, a white bison bull.

The white bison is considered a strong spiritual symbol denoting renewal.

As the CBC reported:

    Dozens of First Nations people from across Saskatchewan, Manitoba and South Dakota attended the ceremony. One of them was Arvol Looking Horse from Green Grass, S.D., the 19th generation carrier of the sacred bundle and pipe believed to have been given to the Dakota people many centuries ago by the White Buffalo Calf Woman.


Gwen Florio

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15
Oct

Arvol Looking Horse on “sweat lodge” deaths: Stop the exploitation

   Posted by: admin    in Culture and Tradition, Lakota

Arvol1
The plea by Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse comes in response to the recent deaths at a sweat lodge-type ceremony in Arizona. (See previous post, here.)

The so-called sweat, which claimed two lives, took place during a five-day retreat in Sedona, Ariz., run by white self-help guru James Arthur Ray. Ray’s Spiritual Warrior programs charges people almost $10,000 apiece.

As this piece in Black Hills Today points out, traditional Native sweats are spiritual and the idea of charging for them is anathema. “It appears that once again greed interfered with common sense,” the piece says.

And it quotes Looking Horse, a 19th-generation keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, who says, “I am concerned for the two deaths and illnesses of the many people that participated in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona, that brought our sacred rite under fire in the news. I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others, are not our ceremonial way of life … My prayers go out for their families and loved ones for their loss.”

In 2006, Looking Horse received the Juliet Hollister Award for promoting peace and interfaith and secular understanding by the Temple of Understanding, joining past recipients Nelson Mandela, Ravi Shankar and the Dalai Lama.

Looking Horse says that while non-Native people have a right to seek help from First Nations intercessors, he has a plea:

“I would like to ask All Nations upon Grandmother Earth to please respect our sacred ceremonial way of life and stop the exploitation of our Tunka Oyate (Spiritual Grandfathers).”

Gwen Florio

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