Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions is the biography of a contemporary Lakota elder and holy man was co-written by an unlikely source. Born in 1912 in Frankfort, Germany, Richard Erdoes was a shy, lonely kid, finding solace in nature and loving American Indians thanks to Karl May, who was famous in Europe for writing fantastically vivid (if otherwise wildly fanciful) Western epics.

Fleeing Hitler in 1938, Erdoes re-settled in New York City but found himself traveling to the wide open prairies of South Dakota which filled him with a sense of peace. It was only a matter of time before he came into the company of Lakota spiritual elders, one of whom, John Fire Lame Deer, decided that he wanted Erdoes to chronicle his life and Lakota traditions. Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions is the result of this collaboration.

The story is narrated exclusively by its namesake and the old guy is a hoot. Profane, hilarious, sacred and profound, he destroys every stereotype about not only grim, unsmiling stoic American Indians, but also grinning, antiseptic New Age “teachers”. Raised on the Rosebud reservation right after the turn of the 19th century, he began life as an angry, if not, imaginative rebel who refused to accept his humiliating station in life. Early in his story, Lame Deer describes his mad car-stealing spree in which he hijacked several Model Ts in the middle of a South Dakota blizzard while “drunk as a boiled owl”, one of the colorful metaphors that Lame Deer peppers in his narrative.

Author: John (Fire) Lame Deer]

Paperback

Condition: Used Book – good

ISBN: 9780671888022