Renowned Oglala Lakota Elder Basil Brave Heart explores forgiveness, unconditional love, and our mystical relationship with all creation.
This time on The Four Sacred Gifts, Anita and Basil explore:
- A lesson on forgiving the unforgivable
- The concept of ‘it takes a village’
- Lakota childbirth and bringing the formless to form
- Honoring the thunder beings
- The breath as a cosmological prayer that is aligned with the divine
- Thanking the divine with an offering of tobacco
- Unconditional love and embracing each other fully
- Defining ourselves, accepting ourselves, and forgiving ourselves each morning
- Basil’s spiritual experience in the midst of a mental health crisis
“You can’t define the divine. You can’t define love. You can’t. Those are mystical things that we embrace. Breathing is a cosmological prayer and we’re participating in a mystic relationship with all divine, with all creation. We’re breathing with the rocks, with the water.” –Basil Brave Heart
About Basil Brave Heart:
Basil Brave Heart is an Oglala Lakota Elder who lives in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a place with a 53.75% unemployment rate and the lowest life expectancy in the United States. Also known as Prisoner of War Camp #334, Pine Ridge was established in 1899 when the United States Government forced Basil’s ancestors onto reservations. He is a Catholic boarding school survivor, retired school administrator, addiction counselor, and Korean War combat veteran who served as a paratrooper in the 1950s. As a young child in the 1930s, Basil’s Grandma Lucy told him about the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. She counseled him to forgive the soldiers who perpetrated the massacre. A dream of his Grandma later guided Basil to change the name of a peak in the Black Hills. In 2016, it was renamed “Black Elk Peak” at the federal level. Basil studies how quantum physics corroborates the wisdom woven throughout the Lakota language and other Indigenous languages. Over the last decade, he has been facilitating truth, healing, and forgiveness across historical divides.
“When I get up every morning, I thank the breath. I say my prayers and I read something that is going to put me in line with the divine. I love myself and forgive myself.” –Basil Brave Heart
