Medicine Wheel

The medicine wheel is used by the Lakota, as well as by many other Native American tribes, as a symbol that is encompassing of many different and separate aspects of the tribe's cultural worldview.

Most prominent among these are the four spokes of the wheel representing the four cardinal directions. The circle around the spokes connects each of the four directions, symbolizing the connectedness and relativity of each direction along with those things which are represented by the directions.

The color yellow is usually associated with the East direction. Being the direction from which the sun rises, it is representative of new life, new beginnings, fire, and the sun.
The color white is usually associated with the North direction, which represents air, courage and bravery. The gift of the many animals on the earth also are said to be given by the great spirit from the north.
Black is usually the color associated with the West direction. The west represents the earth. It is the place where the sun touches the earth each evening, and is therefore also associated with the end of life, and therefore also the wisdom and knowledge that come with age.
The color red is usually associated with the South direction. The South direction represents water, that which is necessary for maintaining life. As such it also represents the plants and other life that depend on water, but also the gifts of mystery and ignorance that come with sustaining life - attributes of the great spirit.

The medicine wheel also is often used as a representation of the earth's many people. Yellow for those people in Asia, white for those from Europe, black for those from Africa, and Red for those from the Americas.

Another layer of symbolism found in the medicine wheel is that is can be used as a map for the human existence. The East direction is the spiritual aspect, North is the mental aspect, West is the physical, and South is the emotional.

These various layers of meaning found in the medicine wheel are all united in that they individually depict many important values in Lakota society individually, yet also maintain the importance of interconnectedness between the people and nature.