By Ivan Star Comes Out
Native Sun News Today Columnist
A Wakinyapi (wakan iyapi, (to speak mystifyingly) is basically a prediction of an event (s) in the future by a Wakan Iyeska (Spiritual Interpreter). According to Christian definitions, a prophecy is a divine revelation communicated through angels and visions or mental guidance. Both allude to the revelation that messages from the higher power are received by earthly prophets.
A prophet is one who receives a divine revelation or message and transmits it to others. However, Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame), a French physician and astrologer believed that history repeated itself and used it to project past events into the future. With his book (1555) containing ten sets of quatrains, he may be the most famed person to predict historic events far into the future.
Some of his prophesies seem to have been proven by events like the 1789 French Revolution, the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1940s, and the 1969 Apollo moon landing. His most famous prediction involved the September 11, 2011 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.
Prophets also lived among the Ikce Wicasa (Natural Man/Humans). Although most prophecies have been obliterated via the Euro-American’s narcissistic domination of North America, a few have survived. Contemporary scholars have published the oral accounts of such predictions and now claim ownership of them under their manmade copyright and plagiarism laws.
All indigenous predictions originated through ceremony. One such ceremony is the Hanbleceyapi, popularly known as the Vision Quest. Usually, this prayer ceremony is performed with abstention from food and water for four days and nights on a high isolated hill. Isnala Wicasa (Lone Man), an Oglala told of his prophecy that came to him during his hanbleceya in the 1800s.
It appears he was seeking enlightenment for the troubled times the Oyate (People) were enduring at that time. My grandfather, Ivan Star Comes Out, documented Lone Man’s vision in 1920. A Jesuit Priest, Rev. Eugene Beuchel, reserved his collection of Lakota texts. Then in 1970, another Jesuit Priest, Rev. Paul Manhart, publish those texts in their book titled Lakota Tales and Texts.
During Lone Man’s hanbleceya, a man dressed in white came to him saying he brought a message. As Lone Man reached toward the man’s outstretched hand, he found himself standing by him. Then he told him to look down and he saw the earth below covered with non-Lakota people. The Lakota, in every bit of space, were crying and the deer and buffalo were staggering about with bloody mouths.
Then the man spoke again, “Father did not think of these things but it is how the people are going to live.” He reminded Lone Man that this hard time will happen but for as short time. In other words, there is an end to the suffering suggesting the Oyate will live again. Then Lone Man saw many kinds of bullets and gunpowder. The man said the people were to use these things to pass the time.
With that, Lone Man was told to go back to his altar. Then the sun rose and he was brought back down from the hill. The very next day, he prepared root of cocklebur with black mud and mixed in bullets and gunpowder with which the people were to hunt and to survive (yet to be clarified).
His hanbloglake (telling of one’s vision) suggests that the people remain peaceful as opposed to being angry and violent. Standing Rock was a peaceful event and the power of it can now be seen as it has expanded from local to the national and global realms. I believe we, as native people, have yet to see that predicted end of the unforgiving centuries-old life we have been enduring.
We have other prophesies that were transmitted to us through our ancient oral traditions and spiritual interpreters. Obviously, many of these predictions are coming to fruition as one looks about the continent and the globe. Actually these prophecies have now escalated to the point where they cannot be conveniently ignored anymore yet most are continuing to disregard them.
There are many such predictions and I can only present a few of them here. One well-known one involves the canunpapi (they smoke tobacco) and the Pte San (White Buffalo Cow). The story is well documented in modern literature. In this prediction, we are told that the Pte San will return when a time of change is near. We have been seeing the Pte San since the 1990s.
Another prophesy speaks of an eighth star that will appear in the Wicakiyuhapi (Carriers) or the “Big Dipper,” part of the Ursa Major (Great Bear) constellation. This large pattern consists of seven stars and is recognized as a distinct grouping in many global cultures. Our oral tradition specifies that the appearance of this eighth star will indicate a change to the life we had known.
Ivan F. Star Comes Out can be reached at P.O. Box 147, Oglala, South
Dakota, 57764; via phone at 605-867-2448 or via email at
mato_nasula2@outlook.com.
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