This Medicine Wheel pictured on our site was gracefully created through mosaic tiles by Northern Cheyenne Tribal member Seidel Standing Elk, and can be found in the entrance foyer of the Adult Education Center, constructed by AIHI partners in 2002. The medicine wheel is a personal guide made and used in many American Indian tribes throughout North America; they vary in meaning, representation & use from tribe to tribe. A medicine wheel provides guidance for the betterment of the self and of mankind, and provides healing and connectedness to the infinite. Generally, the four quarters of the circle make up the circle of life, which contains the four cardinal directions, the four winds, the four elements, and the four parts of the human being (mental, physical, spiritual and emotional).
Each of the four directions on the medicine has its own significance. East is the direction of the rising sun, the path of life and new things. South is the direction of growth and maturation, of full understanding. West is the direction of the setting sun, it represents gradual change from light to dark, life to death, and is the direction of full maturity. West also signifies insight and emotion. North symbolizes spirituality, a place and time of elders and wisdom and positive things.
Wheels can be represented in art, or built from stone on large plots of land as sacred spiritual sites. The Cheyenne medicine wheel in the Big Horn mountain range was built about 200 years ago, and is located directly over one of the ten sites in the world where ancient volcanoes formed the first and oldest layers of rock on earth.
More information:
www.sootribe.org/medicinewheel.html
www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbm/eis/NCheyenneNarrativeReport/Chap7.pdf
www.pma.edmonton.ab.ca/human/archaeo/faq/medwhls.htm
http://users.ap.net/~chenae/spirit.html
www.crystalinks.com/bighorn.html