DOVER — Black Elk, who lived from 1863 to 1950, helped heal his native community and his story continues to inspire — especially at a time when society is so divided.
"He had this great vision when he was 9 years old and collapsed into a coma for 12 days," said Damian Costello, author of "'Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism" and international expert on the subject. "He was taken up into the sky, the spirit world, and given all these gifts and shown how he was called to lead his people to the Good Red Road."
The phrase, Costello said, symbolizes the good way of life. He will present "That the People May Live: The Life and Legacy of Nicholas Black Elk, Holy Man of the Lakota" at Dover Free Library's annual Dessert Social fundraiser at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Desserts are expected to be distributed differently this year due to the pandemic. The event will be held outdoors but if it rains, the presentation will be limited to 50 people inside Town Hall next door. To RSVP, call 802-348-7488.
Costello lives in Montpelier and grew up in Vermont.
"Native culture and history was sort of just in the area, especially at that time in the 90s," he said, referring to when he discovered Black Elk's most famous book, "Black Elk Speaks," while wandering around the college library when he should have been doing schoolwork.
The book changed Costello's life, as he went on to study Black Elk in college and graduate school. He said "Black Elk Speaks" captures many questions coming up in the current age.
"You know, his world literally ended and I think a lot of us are thinking about what's happening now and we're worried about that," he said, citing environmental issues such as pollution.
Black Elk, he said, found a way to live a life of hope despite all the tragedy happening around him and his people.
Costello married a doctor who also was from Vermont. While living in Boston, the couple was deciding where they would live next.
Even though Costello yearned to return to the Green Mountain State, his wife wanted to go to the West Coast to work for the federal Indian Health Service. They ended up on the Navajo Reservation, which he described as four times the size of Vermont.
"You can't fathom it even when you're out there," he said.
The couple stayed out west for five years. While training to become a professor, Costello sought to immerse himself in the culture. He described feeling a little insecure about having written his book during graduate school without such experience.
Black Elk investigated the white world and tried to bring the best of it to his people for the sake of survival, said Costello, who saw himself doing the same but in reverse. He participated in Lakota Sun Dance ceremonies and when he was moving back to Vermont, efforts were underway to rename the highest peak of South Dakota, formerly Harney Peak, to Black Elk Peak.
"That was kind of a multi-year, contentious process," he said. "But that really put him in the news again."
Suddenly, Costello found himself a global authority on Black Elk's life and relevance.
"That kind of got me back to that work, got me back to Pine Ridge [Reservation] for a number of projects and jobs, and teaching about him in places like the Humanities Council venues for the last couple of years," he said. "The Vermont Humanities Council has been a great way to bring my work to vibrant learning communities like the Dover Public Library."
In Dover, Costello plans to discuss the biography of Black Elk and what it means to inhabit the land as settlers. He said he will talk about the ways Black Elk learned to live a life of hope by using stories and teachings but also how native people consciously adopted different parts of European society as a means of surviving.
"Black Elk tried to build a center that everyone could inhabit," Costello said, noting that divisions in society continue to move to further and further extremes. "He wanted to build bridges between natives and settlers."
Costello stressed that "this isn't just history."
"This is a living present in a new future we're trying to build," he said. "It's easy for us to think about how questions of Indian country is just other people and other places. This is really an unresolved question for our whole nation."
Pointing to efforts to rename Mount Rushmore, Costello said, "as settler people, there's a role for us to play. There's a good way for us to engage these things, that it's just too easy to dismiss what natives talk about as unrealistic or too much. It really comes down to a matter of right and wrong ..."
Costello called lessons from Black Elk "an invitation for us to navigate these questions in a more nuanced, authentic way rather than dismissing them on one hand or on the other side, inhabiting a place of anger."
Reach staff writer Chris Mays at cmays@reformer.com and at @CMaysBR on Twitter.
