Arvol Looking Horse
USA

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Mending the Sacred Hoop

My name is Arvol Looking Horse. I am the 19th generation of the keepers of the sacred white buffalo pipe for the Lakotas of the Teton Sioux Nation.

As Lakota, we speak about mending the “sacred hoop.” The sacred hoop of our nation - our Indian way of life - was broken in the massacre at Wounded Knee. After the massacre at Wounded Knee, Sitting Bull said to our people, “From here on, there are going to be many changes. You are going to have to take the good and leave the bad and live life fully.”

Mending the sacred hoop really means not only mending the hoop of the Lakota, but also mending the hoop of the people of our nation, and of our families that have been broken through the years due to a lot of outside forces and things that were imposed on us - like other religions and different ways of education that weren't part of our culture.

In 1990, more than 200 descendents of the survivors rode to Wounded Knee to reunite the Sioux Nation that was split apart. We rode to commemorate those who lost their lives there and for our children, whom we cherish, to set the pace for them and for the next seven generations. This ride was a hard time for me, because I was trying to understand for myself where I stood and how to pass on the dream and vision of our nation in a way our people could really hear it and be a part of it.

After going through these programs from Landmark Education, particularly The Landmark Forum and The Advanced Course, it helped me understand who I am. Who I am is the dream and vision we created in 1990. Now I truly believe in myself and that we will reach these goals and go even further. I have discovered that I have to begin with myself and then see how what I have learned can be applied to everyday life and then translated over to assisting a whole nation to heal itself.

The last 500 years of history has been difficult for Native people. We do not want the next 500 years to be like the last. We are a people who have dreams and visions of the future. Our ancestors instilled these visions in us as children and it is our time to make these dreams and visions a reality.

Today, when we pray with the pipe, we pray for peace and unity, and we look at it as global because the whole world needs it. So now we pray for all mankind, for all creatures, for anything that crawls or flies. We are all related. This is Wolakota.