Lakota and Catholic: Sylvania Franciscan produces documentary on Lakota holy man on path toward sainthood
By Nicki Gorny / The Blade
Sun, 24 May 2020 11:30:00 GMT
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Sister Judith Ann Zielinski was surprised by the announcement that her church had opened a cause for canonization for the Oglala Lakota Black Elk in 2017. Like others familiar with the holy man through John Neihardt’s 1932 book, Black Elk Speaks, she hadn't realized he was Catholic.
But Nicholas Black Elk spent much of his life as a minister and catechist, an integral part of who he was that did not align with the broader narrative of native life on which the author focused. It's this other face of his vocation that Sister Judith Ann, a Sylvania Franciscan, explores in Walking the Good Red Road: Nicholas Black Elk’s Journey to Sainthood.
The documentary airs at 1 p.m. Sunday on WTVG-TV, Channel 13.
Sister Judith Ann wrote and produced Walk the Good Red Road as director of faith and values programming at NewGroup Media in South Bend, Ind., where she draws on extensive professional experience in multimedia, including a previous role as broadcast services director for the Diocese of Toledo. Her most recent project tells the story of a holy man who saw no tension between the spirituality of the Lakota and of the Catholic Jesuits.
Black Elk was already a respected leader and medicine man in his community by the time he was baptized in 1904, when he was around 40. In line with at least two visions detailed in the documentary, he understood the divine to be all-encompassing; Catholicism was less a new faith in his eyes than a new expression of the same faith he had always known and whose spirituality he retained even as brought an estimated 400 Native Americans to Catholicism.
Black Elk died in 1950. The opening of his cause for canonization puts him in the earliest stage of what could be a lengthy path toward sainthood in the Catholic Church; he is currently on track to be the first Native American man to be named a saint.
Sister Judith Ann said she sees particular value in the holy man's example today.
“We are living in a terribly polarized society. Everybody has to stand up and declare where they are,” she said in a conversation with The Blade. “He was a bridge-builder. He was tolerant. He was able to hold his pipe in one hand and his rosary in the other and to be at peace.”
The documentary explores his spiritual life through interviews, re-enactments and multimedia archival records, beginning with many of the noteworthy aspects of his life that were rightfully explored in the earlier book: Black Elk fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn, lived through the Battle of Wounded Knee and toured Europe with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
But the documentary goes further in exploring his later role as a catechist, serving his community alongside and in lieu of priests in some roles for decades.
Filmmakers admirably do not gloss over the harm brought to the Lakota by the Jesuits, who like others in that era ran schools that sought to stamp out native languages, culture and dress; Lakota Elder Basil Brave Heart's account of forced haircuts in the documentary — no prayers offered, the cut hair tread upon rather than burned, in an affront to their spiritual tradition — is particularly impactful.
Those who oppose or question his cause for his canonization, on the proposed grounds that he did not truly adhere to Catholicism, are also acknowledged, but to a lesser extent. Interviewees, including descendants of the holy man, speak eloquently on the way they saw him integrate two spiritual traditions that were at the heart of his life and work.