Shamanic representations: the case of Nicholas Black Elk and the sacred vision

This essay is part of a longer piece that examines the changing representations, within a wide range of texts produced over the last century, of shamans and shamanic experiences. These include ethnographical, historical, autobiographical, and literary works, which are placed carefully within their intellectual as well as generic contexts. The main focus of this work is on the representation of shamanism by Western outsiders. Therefore, this article considers the encounter between a shamanic figure and a western “outsider” in the first half of the 20th century. It goes over the representations of Nicholas Black Elk, a Lakota shaman and his relationship with the poet John G. Neihardt. This work takes on the different approaches through which shamanism has been dealt with within the discourses on Native American shamanism in general. My approach gives a way of reconceptualizing the debates over magic, religion, and rationality by fully historicizing them, and showing for instance the ways in which particular figures become privileged as the site of scientific or experiential authority. In stressing the issue of representation rather than factual accuracy I bring together a diversity of texts in conjunctions that will reveal challenging similarities and continuities between works of scientific and scholarly inquiry, and other works that have always operated on the boundaries of legitimacy