Love of the Soil, Luther Standing Bear

1933 CE • South Dakota

"The old people came literally to love the soil. They sat on the ground with the feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people like to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth . . . The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing."

Luther Standing Bear, Lakota in Clayton T. Russell, "Use of Native American oral tradition in environmental education," (PhD thesis, University of Montana, 1988), 66.

Image: Grabill, John C. H, photographer. Villa of Brule. Pine Ridge South Dakota, ca. 1891. Photograph.