Black Elk Speaks is a book which has generated a great deal of debate because of the circumstances that attended its creation, circumstances that have raised a host of issues involving, among other things, concerns about the possibility of "cultural contamination," and the fact that Black Elk became a Catholic. These problems have made the use of the book in formal academic disciples--its inclusion within the "canon" of books deemed to merit serious study by professionals--controversial. With respect to the discipline of anthropology, one point of contention has to do with how closely the contents of the book reflect authentic Native American spirituality. Generally speaking, the question arises, "Who is really speaking, Black Elk or Neihardt, and what do the words really mean?" The confusion that grows out of this problem can be exemplified by a statement of Steinmetz, a Jesuit, "Black Elk is best understood as a person that followed the path of individuation toward wholeness by assimilating unconscious elements of his traditional religion into his Christian consciousness" (263). If such a statement is to be accepted at face value, it imposes an incredibly difficult task for the cultural anthropologist attempting to use the book as a means of understanding Native American culture and Native American modes of feeling and thought. For such an attempt would necessarily involve separating the intertwined Christian and non-Christian strands that made up the totality of Black Elk's spirituality.
             It may be thought that there is a sense in which such considerations are not particularly important. For it is clearly the case that, however indeterminate the nature of the mix of cultural elements that went into the making of the book, that book remains a moving and eloquent expression of something universal in the spiritual experience of men and women. It is a fact that from begin
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