Have you visited Mt. Rushmore, featuring the impressive carvings of four presidents protruding from a rock ledge? If so, you’ve been the to Black Hills. The Sioux nation considers the Black Hills one of their most sacred sites. Called Paha Sapa, considered the Mother of all creation, it is a place used for ceremonies, initiations, vision quests, and prayer.
The Black Hills were originally included in a reservation treaty made with the US government. The right to sovereignty within designated boundaries in exchange for peace. However, the treaty was rescinded in the late 1800’s when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Their sacred land was quickly overrun with settlers, and gold miners, digging into the mountain in hopes of making their fortunes. Despite years of attempted litigation attempting to force the government to honor the treaty, the land remained the property of the US government.
Standing before the immense presidential carvings, volcanic rage rose up inside me. One arrogant, insensitive, insult piled up on top of another. This land that had for twelve thousand years been home to diverse tribes and wildlife, to a particular way of life, to peoples who lived in harmony with their home, was now ‘owned’ by foreigners with overpowering weapons and relentless greed and entitlement.
In a final act of arrogance, the government chose these same Black Hills to create an immense carving of four presidents, a reminder of who owned and dominated this land. A reminder that an entire continent of people had almost been intentionally wiped out. Those who survived were corralled into reservation lands that left them unable to sustain their way of life and livelihood and thus forced to grovel for a pittance to simply survive.
I made this excursion because I’d received a vision, and I wanted to explore what this vision was trying to convey to me. The vision was of a young Native American boy galloping joyfully across the prairie, his hair unbound, his spirit free. He caught my eye, winked at me, and went on his way. He’d planted the seed, and it was my responsibility to bring it to fruition. Thus, the book I named ‘Soul of the Mountain’ was given birth.
The mountain, a living entity, where the Great Mother, ‘She who generates and sustains life’, is ripped from her people and ravaged by greedy gold diggers to fill their own pockets with her riches, who offer nothing in gratitude for what they take. The people who love her and who she loves in return, lose their sacred mountain and must endure the pain of standing by helplessly as She is ravaged. She is now helpless to defend Herself and is held hostage in the Underworld.
The plight of the soul of the mountain is a symbol of the greed, domination, arrogance, entitlement, dehumanization, and self-centeredness, that plague and undermine our humanity, the true vices that must be conquered if humanity is ever to evolve. It means overcoming our most primordial instincts and embodying the qualities of the heart; compassion, communion, empathy, inclusion, and basic goodwill. It means opening our minds beyond stuck, entrenched positions, beyond righteousness, beyond rigid beliefs. There are many who do, but more who do not. But the truth is becoming more and more obvious. If we are to survive, we may not have a choice.
