Maka Wakan

Sacred Earth - Sioux - 2015

Terragrafie - Nº 856 auf Erdmalerei

71 x 71 cm

Sica Hollow

Spiritual site of the Lakota, Dakota & Nakota

near Sisseton, Lake Traverse Indian Reservation

South Dakota

Across all of the EARTH's continents, I have worked together with many indigenous people on many Earth Art Projects. I have met people who understand that the EARTH is our mother and our home.

Through a personal contact in summer 2015 I was able to realize a Terragraphy project with the SIOUX people in the heart of their land around the Black Hills. With people whose lives, culture and fate have interested and fascinated me since my childhood. Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe in the 19th generation, gave me his blessing for the project.

Together with the medicine man Jim Miller Ironcloud from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation I coul collected SOIL in North und South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana und Wyoming. I dug the SOIL from significant sites which have been holy to the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Cheyenne and other Plains Indian Tribes since primeval times, from historical places intertwined with the SIOUX’s fate and from places illustrating the lifestyle of the SIOUX today. The precise selection of these sites was determined through one of the Seven Holy Rituals of the Lakota in the Sweat of Jim Miller.

The EARTH ART WORKS produced by the end of 2015 tell of the exceptional spirituality and culture of these people, which in turn inspired me to paint underneath some of the EARTH ART WORKS with SOIL.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site from the continued violations called the SACRED BLACK HILLS in South Dakota,
HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT IS.
Our ancestors never seen this site from a Satellite view, but now that those pictures are available with modern technology, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and when fast forwarded it looks like a heart pumping.

(Arvol Looking Horse)

Tȟáȟča Hušté - Lame Deer

Heiliger Mann der Lakota

Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can't have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a an was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were to uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man's worth couldn't be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn't cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white men came, and I don't know how we managed to get along without these basic things which, we are told, are absolutly necessary to make a civilized society.

(Tȟáȟča Hušté - Lame Deer)

[Translate to English:] Chief American Horse — Chief American Horse

[Translate to English:] Joseph Two Bulls — Joseph Two Bulls

[Translate to English:] Sitting Bull — [Translate to English:]

[Translate to English:] Left Hand Bear — Chief Left Hand Bear

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Sacred Earth - Sioux - 2015

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