Healing The Circle -- Visiting Lakota Tribal Leader Says Need Is Great To Mend `Sacred Hoop' Of Spiritual Life

A LIFE OF DEVOTION to Tunkashila (the Creator) has prompted Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse to take his message about world harmony and healing beyond the reservation. What's happening to Turtle Island (Earth) is not good, he says, and the time has come for a widespread return to spirituality.

Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader of the Lakota Indian Nation, has lived a life of devotion to Tunkashila ("Grandfather" or the Creator). It's a devotion involving humility, prayer and learning from his relations - including elders, animals, birds, bugs, trees, rocks, stars, water and wind.

At 12, his people named him Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo Calf Pipe, the most sacred object of the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota nations. He keeps it under 24-hour guard in Green Grass, S.D.

For years he rarely left the reservation but led sacred rites, deepened his understanding of spiritual ways and prophecies, and worked to preserve these ways for future generations.

Now the tall, modest man is sharing some of this information with other people, other nations. He believes that the time has come for a widespread return to spirituality and harmony, as was prophesied generations ago, and that the need is great.

He started in 1990 leading the first commemorative Bigfoot Ride and Wiping of the Tears ceremony on the 100th anniversary of Wounded Knee, where hundreds of men, women and children were killed by the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry.

He has taken his prayers and his message of "mending the sacred hoop" - healing the broken circle of a harmonious, spiritual life - from Baghdad to the United Nations, from The Hague to Seattle.

He culminates a week of talks at area colleges and tribal centers with tomorrow's Voices of Wisdom event with Lakota elder/spiritual adviser Dave Chief, plus Northwest elders, at 7 p.m. in the Odd Fellows Hall, 915 E. Pine St. (Donation: $7 per individual, $10 per couple).

As Looking Horse told a group that met him Monday at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, "According to the prophecies of our nation, it's up to us to make (world harmony and healing) happen, to get the nations together as one.

"As spiritual leader of the Bigfoot Ride and the things we're doing for the Freedom of Religion Act (lobbying for use of sacred objects and rituals that some local governments have attempted to control), we're trying to bring an awareness of the practices of our spirituality. There are some things we want to share.

"We are to take care of Turtle Island (Earth). What's happening is not good. So we have to help that."

Part of his message is explaining the meaning of the birth of a white buffalo calf last August in Janesville, Wis.

In Lakota tradition, the White Buffalo Calf Woman was a spiritual figure who gave the Sacred Pipe to the people hundreds of years ago in a time of confusion and difficulty. She promised to return as a white buffalo calf at a later time of confusion and hardship, to remind people to return to spiritual ways.

Elders prophesied the calf would turn yellow, red-brown and almost black - which it is doing - unless people prayed for peace and unity. A day of world prayer has been set for June 21, 1996. Riders and walkers from many nations will convene at the Black Hills sacred site known as Devil's Tower.

In his talks here, Looking Horse has decried poverty, homelessness and famine, which he said result from some people's need for power. This greed poisons land, air and water, and hurts all beings, he said. He talks about deer born deformed because of mercury left in the Black Hills by gold miners.

"People get caught up in it. But there's something missing: the spirituality, the balance.

"If people could look at each other as brother and sister, we'd feel good because there's no person higher than another person. Our families are really important."

People need to go back to sacred places to pray, he said, to re- establish a bond with the Great Spirit.

For his work, Looking Horse has earned an honorary doctorate in humanities from the University of South Dakota.

But his life as a spiritual leader has not been easy. Looking Horse has had to deal with controversy not only from the government over sacred sites and treaties, but from individuals.

"Some feel that because the buffalo calf was born off reservation, it is not sacred," he said. "But once, our people roamed all that land."

Looking Horse does make time for humor, particularly if it contains a teaching.

"A hundred years ago they said the buffalo would disappear and we would be eating something like buffalo," he told a class.

"But there's one thing about cattle: They put their rear ends into the wind. They have things the wrong way around."