“Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and around and about me was the whole hoop of the world… I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I saw that the Sacred Hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as day light and as starlight and in the centre grew one almighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father,and I saw that it was holy.”
–From the vision of Nicholas Black Elk (Lakota Holy Man: 1863 – 1950)