Robert Black Eagle Costa - Principle Elder of Seventh Generation Native American Church
The name and inspiration for the Seventh Generation Native American Church comes from the Vision and Prophecy of Crazy Horse, the great Sioux warrior, as he sat in prayer with Sitting Bull, just four days before he was murdered. In his vision, Crazy Horse saw that, “The Red Nation shall rise again and they will be a blessing for a sick world. A world full of broken promises, selfishness and seperation - a world longing for light again. In that day, there will be those among the Native Elders who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young White ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. That time of the Seven Generations will be when all the colors of mankind, Red, Yellow, Black, and White, will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life, and the whole Earth will become one circle again.”
Robert knows that the young people who came to Standing Rock to stand in solidarity as water protectors, and the young people he speaks to now are the seventh generation that Crazy Horse prophesied about. “We must become like these children who understand kindness and unity. That is our only hope.”
It is the intention and mission of the Seventh Generation Native American Church to honor that vision by providing wise counsel, wisdom, guidance, teaching, and ceremony to any and all who come in a good way, with clean hands, an open heart, sincere spirit, and a deep desire to walk in beauty, affirming each step as prayer and enlightenment, seeking unity, understanding, harmony, peace, and justice to and among all living things.
A’ȟo O Mítákuye Oyásín
“I salute the light within your eyes where the universe dwells - for when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, then we shall be as one.”