Thursday, August 28, 2014

WAKON'DA


WAKON’DA

 An invisible and continuous life
 was believed to permeate all things,
 seen and unseen.
 This life manifests itself in two ways.
First, by causing to move;
All motion, all actions of mind or body
are because of this invisible life;
 Second by causing permanency
of structure and form,
 as in the rock, the physical features
of the landscape, mountains, plains, streams,
rivers, lakes, the animals and man.
This invisible life
is similar to the will power
of which man is conscious
within himself—
a power by which things are brought to pass.
Through this mysterious life and power
All things are related to one another
and to man, the seen to the unseen,
the dead to the living,
a fragment of anything
to its entirety.
This invisible life and power
was called Wakon’da.

(p. 134, The Omaha Tribe, by Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, 1911,
with passages as set in poetic form by Robin Ridington, 1992)

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