The Price of a Gift: A Lakota Healer's Story

By Joseph Eagle Elk and Gerald Mohatt

Book Overview

Joseph Eagle Elk (1931-91) was an effective and highly respected traditional Lakota healer. He practiced for nearly thirty years, treating serious physical and mental illnesses among the people of the Rosebud Reservation and elsewhere. In 1990 he began collaborating on his memoir with Gerald Mohatt, a close friend and cross-cultural psychologist.

Eagle Elk's story of his life, practice, and beliefs provides a uniquely introspective, demystified, and informative look at the career of a traditional Native American healer. We learn how a persistent vision and recurring visits by thunder spirits led Eagle Elk long ago to become a healer. On a more general level, we gain valuable insights into how Lakota healers practice today. Eagle Elk's story and teachings also demonstrate the importance of community support and consensus in the development of traditional healers. Gerald Mohatt's perspective as a cross-cultural psychologist enables him to highlight the psychological dimensions and efficacy of Eagle Elk's healings and place them within a cross-cultural context.

Eagle Elk's life and career are presented in a way that brings together formative episodes from his life, selected teachings that emerged from those experiences, and case studies in healing. This arrangement allows readers to grasp the close relationship between the personal and cultural dimensions of traditional healing and to understand how and why this practice continues to affect and help others.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803282826
• ISBN13: 9780803282827
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Jerry Mohatt's Priceless Gift

I was so impressed with this book - it struck so close to home - that I could not read it all at once. Like Mohatt, I lived with these people, I Sundanced with Joe Eagle Elk's father, ceremonied, got drunk, into trouble & rose again to help people. Mohatt's text is so close to the actual truth of the conditions on the reservation it literally scared me. That's why I had to stop reading from time to time. The Price of a Gift is the equal of Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, which is one of the great books about Lakota spirituality.

Honors the true voice

This is a remarkable work that honors the true voice of a Lakota medicine man and the voices of his people. Mohatt's labor is not to analyze or interpret so much as present an experience which can only begin to be appreciated or understood when the suffering, missteps, fears, and clowning of the healer are shown along with their transcendence. Eagle Elk was an ordinary man who resisted but finally gave himself over to his calling. There are many books that romanticize tokens of Native cultures or presume to make use of them; this is not that sort of book. Like Fadiman's, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, this is a work of great reverence.

Splendid, invaluable contribution to Native American studies

The story of Joseph Eagle Elk, Lakota Healer (1931-91), as told to Gerald Mohatt, cross-cultural psychologist, is simply and beautifully told.The effect of many mirrors of the gift of Joseph Eagle Elk derives in part from testimonials by people who he knew and helped to heal themselves. The sacrifice, persecution, and exhausting , demanding life of the traditional Lakota healer are fully portrayed. But the beauty that sings through in Price of a Gift is undeniable. Just to read such a book, just to know such a person lived and touched others, is profound and impacting in itself. An awareness of the core value of our lives radiates through the stories of the life of Eagle Elk. It is impossible to avoid the basic message of this book, with all its humble compassion. Without distortion, greed, evil, or pettiness, the matter of spiritual healing both as duty and joy is its glorious burden. Black Elk's vision included an awareness that the Lakota legacy would include an intrument of healing. The Price Of A Gift is evidence of that legacy. What a gift it is, to us all.Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

A Beautiful, Powerful Book

This is a must-read for everyone interested in healthcare, healing, mental health and/or Lakota culture and spirituality. It's a biography of the late Joseph Eagle Elk, which is riveting and remarkable. And as an extra bonus, the last chapter consists of a lively, multicultural discourse on the spiritual aspects of health and healing. I wish it were required reading for all healthcare professionals in the U.S.! As a Lakota, I found the book accurate and very moving. It's also one of the few books about Indigenous Tribal People written by a European-American that is truly and deeply respectful. The author conveys the complexity of Lakota culture without being patronizing or pseudo-mystical. Thank you, Mr. Mohatt, for this beautiful book.