As the wind breathes out of Wind Cave in my face, I am reminded of the creation of humans and my own small place in this magnificent world.  Wind Cave National Park is named for the Cave itself, called Washun Niya, or the Breathing Hole of Mother Earth, by the Lakota People.  In this creation story, it is from here that they emerged to this world.

It is a complex cave system, according to scientists,  we may only have a sense of 5% of the cave’s volume and breadth, and likely even less of its power.  In the vernacular of some, this might be known as the “ known unknown.”  To most Indigenous peoples, there is an understanding of the Great Mystery.

So it is that in 2012, the time of change and transformation in an American election year, and also according to the Mayan Calendar, we find that the smallness and the greatness of humans in a world around us, comes face to face with us in the Black Hills.  A most sacred place- Pe’Sla, in the center of the Lakota Universe is up for sale, and values and questions clash.

As Lakota scholar Chase Iron Eyes explains, “…Pe’Sla, to the Lakota, is the place where Morning Star, manifested as a meteor, fell to earth to help the Lakota by killing a great bird which had taken the lives of seven women; Morning Star’s descent having created the wide open uncharacteristic bald-spot in the middle of the forested Black Hills.  (On American maps, this is called, Old Baldy) …The Morning Star placed the spirits of those seven women in the sky as the constellation “Pleiades” or “The Seven Sisters.”  READ MORE HERE:  http://www.lastrealindians.com/2012/08/15/the-auction-of-the-sacred/