Nicholas Black Elk, a renowned Oglala Lakota holy man from the 1930s and 1940s, related a succession of Falling Star myths in which the hero of the stories, Falling Star, is clearly traveling through the Black Hills as he undertakes his adventures, but the seven villages he visits are referred to as 'Star Villages'. Black Elk correlated the seven star villages with the seven stars of the Pleiades or the Big Dipper. The villages are thus both in the Black Hills and in the heavens (Sundstrom et al. 1996). This closely entwined association between the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, and the spiritual realm explains the passion and intensity with which the Lakota Nation has fought to reclaim their sacred
