As You Walk Upon The Sacred Earth,

Grandfather, Great Spirit, Once More Behold Me On Earth And Lean To Hear My Feeble Voice.

Perhaps You Have Noticed That Even In The Very Lightest Breeze You Can Hear The Voice Of The Cottonwood Tree; This We Understand Is Its Prayer To The Great Spirit, For Not Only Men, But All Things And All Beings Pray To Him Continually In Differing Ways.

Once We Were Happy In Our Own Country And We Were Seldom Hungry, For Then The Two-leggeds And The Four-leggeds Lived Together Like Relatives, And There Was Plenty For Them And For Us. But The Wasichus Came, And They Have Made Little Islands For Us And Other Little Islands For The Four-leggeds, And Always These Islands Are Becoming Smaller, For Around Them Surges The Gnawing Flood Of The Wasichu; And It Is Dirty With Lies And Greed.

They Told Me I Had Been Sick Twelve Days, Lying Like Dead All The While, And That Whirlwind Chaser, Who Was Standing Bear's Uncle And A Medicine Man, Had Brought Me Back To Life.

I Was Standing On The Highest Mountain Of Them All, And Round About Beneath Me Was The Whole Hoop Of The World. And While I Stood There I Saw More Than I Can Tell And I Understood More Than I Saw; For I Was Seeing In A Sacred Manner The Shapes Of All Things In The Spirit, And The Shape Of All Shapes As They Must Live Together Like One Being. And I Saw That The Sacred Hoop Of My People Was One Of Many Hoops That Made One Circle, Wide As Daylight And As Starlight, And In The Center Grew One Mighty Flowering Tree To Shelter All Children Of One Mother And One Father. And I Saw That It Was Holy.