Wakan Tanka
Wakan Tanka
10 min read
Wakan Tanka, the “Great Spirit” or “Great Mystery,” is the supreme divine principle of Lakota spirituality. This central concept of the Lakota Sioux refers to a sacred, all-pervading force that animates all things. It structures the cosmology, rituals, and ethics of an entire people.
Key Facts
- Wakan Tanka is the central concept of the Lakota religion, literally meaning “Great Mystery” or “Great Sacred”
- The Lakotas settled on the Great Plains of the Dakotas in the 17th–18th centuries, the period when their spiritual tradition was structured
- Black Elk (1863–1950), a Lakota visionary, spread knowledge of Wakan Tanka through *Black Elk Speaks* (1932)
- Wakan Tanka is not a personified deity but a spiritual force immanent to all of creation
- The Sun Dance, the central ritual addressed to Wakan Tanka, was banned by the United States from 1883 to 1934
Works & Achievements
Wakan Tanka is the source of the seven foundational ceremonies passed down by White Buffalo Calf Woman: prayer with the pipe, Inipi purification, the vision quest, the Sun Dance, the female coming-of-age rite, the mourning rite, and the kinship-making rite. These ceremonies structure the entirety of Lakota spiritual and social life.
The full body of origin stories, creation myths, and ethical teachings that structure the Lakota worldview forms a sacred corpus attributed to the revelation of Wakan Tanka, encompassing the creation of the world, the origin of the bison, and the cycle of ages.
This seminal book transcribes the visions and teachings of Oglala holy man Black Elk, describing with rare precision his relationship with Wakan Tanka. It is considered one of the most important Native American spiritual texts of the 20th century.
Dictated by Black Elk to Joseph Epes Brown, these accounts describe in detail the seven Lakota sacred rites and their connection to Wakan Tanka, constituting one of the most precise sources on Lakota theology and ritual practice.
The most important ceremony of the Lakota calendar, dedicated to giving thanks to Wakan Tanka. Dancers fast and dance for several days around a sacred cottonwood tree, with some practicing suspension through skin incisions as the ultimate offering to the Great Mystery.
Anecdotes
Around 1872, at the age of nine, the young Lakota Black Elk fell gravely ill and experienced an extraordinary vision: Wakan Tanka revealed to him the tree of life at the center of the sacred circle of the world. This vision, passed on decades later to the writer John Neihardt, has become one of the most celebrated accounts of Native American spirituality. Black Elk described Wakan Tanka not as a personal figure but as a power that runs through all things.
Lakota tradition holds that White Buffalo Calf Woman (Ptesan-Wi) once appeared to two hunters and presented them with the Chanunpa, the sacred pipe. She explained that smoking this pipe was a way of praying directly to Wakan Tanka, for the smoke rises toward the sky just as human prayers do. One of the two hunters, who had harbored impure thoughts, was destroyed on the spot, while the other received the sacred message to carry back to his entire people.
The physician and ethnographer James Walker, who worked at the Pine Ridge reservation between 1896 and 1914, recorded the explanations of spiritual leader Finger concerning Wakan Tanka. Finger described Wakan Tanka to him as a unity made up of sixteen sacred entities organized into four groups of four — a complex conception that bewildered Christian missionaries who tried to reduce it to a simple “One God.” This account, published in 1980 under the title *Lakota Belief and Ritual*, is today a major source for researchers.
In 1876, before the Battle of Little Bighorn, spiritual leader Sitting Bull performed a three-day Sun Dance to receive a vision from Wakan Tanka. He was given the promise of victory over American soldiers, symbolized by grasshoppers falling from the sky. The crushing victory over Custer that followed lastingly strengthened the Lakotas' faith in the power of the Great Mystery.
In 1904, the American government officially banned Lakota religious ceremonies, including the Sun Dance, which it deemed barbaric. Despite this prohibition, the Lakotas continued to secretly practice their rites in honor of Wakan Tanka for decades. It was not until 1978, with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that these spiritual practices were formally protected under American law.
Primary Sources
The voice said: “Look upon what has been done while you were walking.” And I looked down and saw all the hoop of my people, and in its center the flowering tree. Wakan Tanka had shown me the power of the sacred circle.
We regard the sacred pipe as a true relative. Through it, we send our voices to Wakan Tanka, our Father and Grandfather. The smoke of the pipe is our breath, and that breath is sacred.
Wakan Tanka is like sixteen gods in one. But each of these sixteen is in relation to the others, so that together they form the Great Mystery. No white man can understand this until he has lived among us.
The songs addressed to Wakan Tanka are not composed by men but revealed in dream or vision. They belong to the Great Spirit, and man is only their temporary keeper.
The Great Spirit is not consigned to a distant heaven but dwells in every tree, every blade of grass, every river and every hill. The earth is not our mother by metaphor — she truly is, for everything we are comes from her.
Key Places
The sacred heart of Lakota territory, considered the birthplace of the people and a privileged place of communication with Wakan Tanka. Still claimed by the Lakotas today, the Black Hills are home to vision quest and ceremony sites.
This isolated butte is one of the most sacred vision quest sites for the Lakotas and Cheyennes. Young men would climb it alone to fast and pray to Wakan Tanka in search of a vision that would shape their spiritual life.
Site of the 1890 massacre, where the U.S. Army killed several hundred Lakotas. This place has become a symbol of Lakota resistance and the endurance of their spirituality in the face of persecution.
According to Lakota mythology, it was from this cave that the first people emerged onto the earth, guided by Wakan Tanka. This underground site represents the womb of Mother Earth and the point of contact between the human world and the spirit world.
Site of the famous 1876 battle where Sitting Bull, after receiving a vision from Wakan Tanka during the Sun Dance, led his people to victory against the American troops of General Custer.