Ancestor Wisdom: A Living Lakota Elder Speaks — David Swallow Junior, Wowitan Uha Mani
There are voices that carry something you cannot manufacture, credential, or learn in a weekend workshop. This is one of them.
I have had the privilege of being in circle with this elder — in ceremony, in the sacred Black Hills, in the kind of silence that only happens when someone genuinely rooted in ancient ways is present. David Swallow Junior — Wowitan Uha Mani, Walks With Pride — of Porcupine, South Dakota, Oglala Lakota, carries what has been passed down through an unbroken living lineage, through elders who themselves received it from elders, going back further than written history reaches.
He grew up speaking Lakota as his first language, in a time when very few still do. He did not choose the medicine path. As he says himself — the spirits chose him. Not because he is a perfect man. Because he speaks the truth.
"My name is Wowitan Uha Mani. I'm a Lakota. Aho."
THE WOUND BENEATH THE WOUND
When asked what we can learn from his people, David Swallow does not offer a philosophy. He offers a direction:
"First of all, start reconnecting back to the earth. We all need our mother. Without the mother there is no life."
This is Step 1 in Nature's 4 Steps of Healing — Balance. The honest recognition that something essential has been severed. Not by personal failure, but by generations of forgetting — what David calls becoming wasicu not in skin but in mind.
Disconnected from the earth.
Disconnected from relation.
Disconnected from the original instructions that every living thing was born carrying.
The snake knows its instructions. The four-legged know theirs. The winged ones know theirs.
"The two-legged forgot."
That forgetting is the wound beneath every wound. The exhaustion, the emptiness, the searching that brought you to this page — David Swallow would recognize it immediately. He has sat with it in hundreds of ceremonies. It is the ache of a people who have been trying, for generations, to find their way home without a map.
ON INSTITUTIONS, CORPORATIONS, AND THE HOLE IN THE HEART
One of the most striking moments in David's conversation comes when he speaks of the state of the world in 2022 — and it lands as though he is speaking of right now, today:
"All these corporations are running the way things are and they have trillions and billions of dollars... and still they want more and more. It's like a big hole in the center of their heart without no end."
A hole in the center of the heart without no end.
This is what the Lakota call imbalance — not just individual imbalance but collective imbalance, the state of a civilization that has mistaken acquisition for abundance and control for peace. No institution built on that foundation, David says simply, is good for any human being.
"No institution is good for no human being."
Not because institutions are inherently evil — but because the corporate mind, by its nature, serves its own continuation rather than the healing of the people.
The medicine way is the opposite: it gives what it receives. It serves the circle rather than the center.
This is why IndigenousHealing.io was built as it was — free, circular, rooted in relationship rather than transaction. Not as an institution. As a circle.
I AM NOT AN INDIAN. I AM A LAKOTA.
David is clear — and has been clear in every university he has addressed — about something that matters deeply for anyone walking toward Indigenous wisdom:
"I am not an Indian. I am not a Native American. I am a Lakota."
And then, turning it gently: "You were born here? Then you are a Native American. I am a Lakota."
This distinction is not semantic. It is the difference between a name imposed from outside and a name that carries a people's own understanding of who they are. The Lakota Nation — the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires — is older than the Bureau of Indian Affairs, older than the United States of America, older than the Britain invasion. It was made by spirit, not by man.
Knowing the truth — and speaking it — is itself a form of healing.
"People like you, record this and show it to everybody. So they all know the exact truth."
This library entry, this blog post, is part of that truth-telling.
WE COULD COMBINE NATURE MEDICINE AND WESTERN MEDICINE
In one of the most quietly visionary moments of the conversation, David speaks of what is possible:
"I'm pretty sure we could combine nature medicine and Western medicine together and we could cure a lot of these things here."
This is not a rejection of science. It is an invitation to wholeness — the recognition that the two ways of knowing, when held together in honest relationship, are more powerful than either alone. The nervous system research now emerging from Western science — polyvagal theory, epigenetics, somatic healing — is confirming what Indigenous healers have practiced empirically for thousands of years.
The ancestors knew. The scientists are catching up.
IndigenousHealing.io exists precisely at this intersection — honoring both the ancient wisdom and the emerging science, inviting the Seeker to walk a path that belongs to neither institution but draws from the living truth in both.
WHY THIS PLATFORM IS FREE
One of the most common questions I receive about IndigenousHealing.io is simply: why is it free?
The answer lives in what David Swallow teaches about ceremony and about healing in the Lakota way.
In the traditional understanding, healing is not a transaction. You do not purchase it the way you purchase a subscription. You come in need, in honesty, with an offering, of presence and a humble heart — and the medicine meets you there. The medicine man does not own the healing. As David says — he is only a translator, interpreting between the human language and the spiritual language, serving as a vessel for something far greater than any individual.
"Nobody is the captain of these ceremonies. Nobody. Only the Creator."
This is why Nature's 4 Steps of Healing are offered here at no cost. Not because they have no value — but because wisdom that was given freely, received freely, must be shared freely, and reciprocated freely from a heart generously FULL of gratitude (not requirement).
The moment a healer begins to hoard or demand what needs to be given as an energy-exchange gift in the fair trade of the resonance flow of grateful exchange, something essential is lost. Not just for the people — for the healer.
IndigenousHealing.io exists in that spirit. The circle is open. The door has no lock. Come as you are, in whatever need brought you here, and let what is already yours be remembered, shared, reciprocated so that it may ripple out, magnify, multiply to heal and bless ALL our relations.
THE PEOPLE ARE THE POWER
Near the end of his conversation, David says something that belongs on the front door of every healing community in the world:
"The real power is the people. And the people have to stand up. If we have all the people here, if we stand up for ONE way and ONE thing, then we will all receive good life and we will all survive."
One way. One thing.
Not one religion.
Not one nation.
ONE recognition — that we are all, as David says, suffering the same thing here.
That beneath every difference of skin, language, history, and tradition, the wound is shared.
And therefore — the healing is shared.
"If we're gonna live together here we have to have better communication, better coexistence, and put the racial things aside.
Put it away and we could all begin to heal. Because we're all suffering the same thing."
This is Mitakuye Oyasin lived in real time. All My Relations — not as a closing prayer but as a governing truth. The circle at IndigenousHealing.io is built on exactly this: that healing is not competitive, not exclusive, not for sale — and that the people, standing together in honest recognition of shared suffering and shared longing, are the medicine of remembering who we are - what we are - an integral part of the ONE-ness.
Hear David Swallow Junior speak in his own voice — filmed at his home on Pine Ridge Reservation, in a conversation of remarkable honesty and depth:
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And here — after all the words — David Swallow sings the Red Road prayer song. This is the PATH we invite you to walk in ONE-ness with all our relations, globally.
Let it carry what language cannot:
This entry is offered in deep respect and gratitude for David Swallow Junior's (Wowitan Uha Mani, Walks With Pride) willingness to speak and sing these truths publicly, so that those who have forgotten may begin to remember.
The full oral tradition of the Crazy Horse prophecy — which speaks directly to this time of the 7th generation — is explored in a separate library and blog entry.
That entry is coming next week..
AN INVITATION
Come here. Feel the growing global resonance of a family circle gathering 24/7
— people from every nation discovering,
each in their own way, in their own time zone, their own sovereign healing capacity.
As we open our hearts to Nature's 4 Resonance Steps of Healing — Balance, Harmony, Abundance, Peace — we are drawn into our innate oneness with all life and
with one another
— one love-resonating whisper gathering our global human family,
right where we live and right on time,
meeting in resonance across the miles,
from within — where true healing resonance happens.
Mitakuye Oyasin — All My Relations.
Bunny Sings Wolf
Relative of Chief John Grass (Mato Watapke)
Ambassador, Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation
Founder, IndigenousHealing.io
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