05/17/2025
In the time of the ancestors lived a Lakota holy man, Drinks Water, who dreamed of what was to be. In a dream Drinks Water saw all the four-leggeds go back into the earth and in their place a race of two-legged strangers wove a web around the Lakota. Then, in his dream, Drinks Water saw his people living in square gray homes, on a barren land; and beside those homes, the people starved. Soon after his vision, it is said, Drinks Water returned to Mother Earth. He died from sorrow.
Drinks Water's vision occurred long before the coming of the whites with their fences and houses and their slaughter of the great buffalo herds. At the time his dream must have been incomprehensible to his people. What Drinks Water saw was a change of worlds and it was more than he could endure.
When interpreting dreams or prophecies it should be remembered that a literal approach is often misleading. This is particularly the case with the prophecies presented here. Rather than the end of the world, what is implied is a transformation of consciousness from one view of the world to another, and the emergence of the new world.
For over a century, the American Indian shamans have prophesied the end of an earth cycle, the disappearance of the white man, and the return of all living things which had vanished under the pressures of the present world. The time, we are told, is near. As we observe governments, industries, and ourselves, we can see a system of waste and pollution so widespread as to cast a shadow across the generations to come. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to predict disaster. Forturnately, we are aware of the need for change. The question is, whether the necessary changes in our institutions and ourselves will occur faster than the production of pollution generated by our old patterns of behavior.
Like a dormant tree enduring winter, the Indian's respect for the earth, their desire to live in harmony with nature, lives still, waiting to bloom again in the next world cycle. Only by honoring Mother Earth, Indian shamans tell us, can we avert disaster. We have their example and their prophets to guide the human family into the new world. We are one with all creation.
