Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities

This biography of Black Elk is based on extensive interviews with Lucy Looks Twice, the holy man's last surviving child, as well as others who knew him personally. Michael F. Steltenkamp sheds new light on the figure portrayed in Black Elk Speaks as a victim of Western subjugation, doomed to live out his life as a relic of the past. Instead, Steltenkamp reveals that in 1904 Black Elk was baptized a Catholic and subsequently served as a devoted catechist and missionary to his fellow American Indians until his death in 1950.