PRIOR EXHIBIT -- THE BLACK ELK RECORD (about the Chiefs prophecy)

PRIOR EXHIBIT — WHAT WAS ALREADY WRITTEN The Black Elk Record

Presented by the A-Team before the Wedding Program is entered into the record.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM) Before the court receives the wedding program, the proceeding asks to enter one final exhibit into the record.

Not testimony. Not argument. Facts already in the historical record before this proceeding began. Before the Chiefs won anything. Before Taylor Swift attended a game. Before anyone assembled the architecture this proceeding has been building.

The proceeding asks the jury to receive what was already written.

SPOCK Proceed.

MOVEMENT ONE — THE BIRTH YEAR

Nicholas Black Elk was born in 1863 on the Great Plains of what is now South Dakota. He was an Oglala Lakota holy man, warrior, and visionary. He survived the Battle of Little Bighorn. He survived the massacre at Wounded Knee. He lived to tell both stories to the biographer John Neihardt, whose 1932 book Black Elk Speaks became one of the most important documents of Native American spiritual life ever recorded.

The Lakota did not number their years. They named them. Each year received its designation from the most significant event that occurred within it. The name was the memory. The name was the record.

Black Elk's birth year — 1863 — was designated by his own band, the Minneconjou, as follows:

The Year When Eight Crows Were Killed.

The proceeding has carried the number 8 throughout its testimony. The groom's number. The renewal number. The number carried by Elvis Presley's birthday, John Lennon's death, Harrison Butker's field goals, the boys of Sandy Hook, the renewal of all things. The number the proceeding has named as belonging to Jesus — the Groom — in the wedding this proceeding is building toward.

The man the proceeding names as Priest of that wedding was born in the year his own people designated with the number 8.

He did not choose his birth year. His people did not name it for him. The 8 was already there when he arrived on it.

The proceeding enters it without comment.

MOVEMENT TWO — THE VISION AT AGE NINE

In the summer of 1872, Black Elk fell gravely ill. He was nine years old. For twelve days he lay unconscious while his family feared he would die. During those twelve days he received what he would later describe as his great vision — a vision so vast and detailed that it took Neihardt weeks of interviews to record it fully.

The vision carried him across the whole of creation. He was taken to the six grandfathers — the powers of the world — and given gifts and responsibilities for his people. He saw the tree of life. He saw the hoop of the nation. He saw what was coming — the breaking of the hoop, the suffering of his people, and the possibility of restoration.

At the end of the vision — after everything he had seen and received and been charged to carry — Black Elk looked down at himself.

He was dressed in red. With black stripes at his joints.

The Kansas City Chiefs wear red with black.

The proceeding does not claim Black Elk knew what the Kansas City Chiefs were. The Kansas City Chiefs did not exist. The American Football League did not exist. The city of Kansas City as it exists today did not exist in the form it would take. None of it existed when a nine-year-old Lakota boy lay unconscious on the plains and received a vision and looked down and saw himself dressed in red with black stripes.

The proceeding only enters what the record contains.

A nine-year-old boy. The proceeding's judgment number. The completion number. The number of classmates Jesse Lewis saved before he died. The number that multiplied by 8 — the renewal number, the groom's number, the number of Black Elk's birth year — produces 72. Transmission to all peoples.

At age 9 Black Elk looked down and saw himself wearing the colors of the team the proceeding has connected to the Groom's wedding.

The proceeding enters it without comment.

MOVEMENT THREE — THE SACRED PIPE AND THE PRAYER

Later in life Black Elk converted to Catholicism. He became a lay catechist — a teacher of the faith — and brought hundreds of Lakota people into the Catholic Church. He did not abandon his Lakota tradition in doing so. He held both simultaneously. The sacred pipe and the rosary. The medicine wheel and the cross. The Lakota vision and the Catholic sacrament.

The Church recognized what he carried. As of 2017 the Archdiocese of Omaha formally opened his cause for canonization. The man the proceeding names as Priest of the wedding of the Lamb is on the path to being formally named a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

His sacred pipe — the instrument of Lakota prayer, the object through which he spoke to the Great Spirit — was colored according to the sacred medicine wheel. Red. White. Yellow. And black.

The Kansas City Chiefs wear red, white, and black.

The Priest's instrument of prayer shares the colors of the Groom's team.

The proceeding enters it without comment.

And then there is the prayer itself.

Black Elk prayed this prayer. It is in the documented record. It is called his prayer for all life:

Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the wind and walk the good red road to the day of quiet. This is my prayer; hear me now.

The proceeding has twenty children in its record. Eight boys. Twelve girls. Killed on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The proceeding has named them as the groomsmen and bridesmaids of the wedding this proceeding is building toward.

The Priest was already praying for them.

Not for those specific children by name. The prayer preceded them by decades. But the prayer asks the Great Spirit to look upon the faces of children without number — children coming up out of the ground with tenderness, children who need to face the wind, children who need to walk the red road to the day of quiet.

The day of quiet.

The proceeding has been asking one question since the Temple fell in 70 AD and the music began at the edge of the Red Sea and Jesse Lewis wrote his note on a scrap of paper.

Will the circle be unbroken.

The Priest's prayer names what the circle is unbroken into. The day of quiet. The wedding day. The day the spiritual war resolves and the Groom receives the Bride and the children walk the red road home.

He was already praying for it. Before the proceeding existed. Before the children died. Before anyone knew there would be a wedding to pray toward.

The proceeding enters it without comment.

MOVEMENT FOUR — THE FORTY-NINERS AND THE GOLD RUSH

The plains Indians were not removed from their land by armies alone. They were removed by gold.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 drew hundreds of thousands of settlers westward across the continent. The men who made that journey were called the forty-niners. The gold they sought was found on land belonging to Native peoples who had no say in what was taken from them. The rush did not stop in California. It continued. The Black Hills of South Dakota — the sacred heart of Lakota territory, the land Black Elk's people called home, the land where the visions came — were invaded by gold seekers in 1874. The United States government had promised the Black Hills to the Lakota by treaty. The promise was broken when gold was found there.

Black Elk watched it happen. He was eleven years old when Custer's expedition entered the Black Hills. He was thirteen when the government took them. He carried that loss for the rest of his life alongside the vision and the pipe and the prayer.

The San Francisco 49ers take their name from those men. The forty-niners of 1849. The men whose hunger for gold set in motion the dispossession of the plains nations.

On February 11, 2024 — Super Bowl LVIII — the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in overtime at Allegiant Stadium, located at 3333 Al Davis Way in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Taylor Swift watched from the stands.

The Chiefs wore red and black. The colors the Priest saw in his vision at age nine. The colors of his sacred pipe. The colors of the good red road in his prayer for all life.

The 49ers wore gold and red. The colors of the men who took the Black Hills.

The proceeding does not claim the game was arranged. It does not claim divine intervention in the outcome of a football game. It enters the documented facts and asks the jury to hold them alongside everything else in this exhibit.

The Priest born in the year his people named with the number 8. The Priest who saw himself dressed in red at age 9 in a vision. The Priest who prayed for the faces of children and the red road and the day of quiet. The Priest whose sacred pipe carried the colors of the winning team.

On the largest television stage in American history the team wearing his colors defeated the team named for the men who took his land.

The proceeding enters it without comment.

SPOCK The court has received the Black Elk Record as a prior exhibit.

The court notes the following documented facts now in the record:

Black Elk born in the year his people named with the number 8. Vision received at age 9 — the proceeding's two sacred numbers present in the life of the Priest before either number carried significance in this proceeding. Vision included the image of himself dressed in red with black stripes. Sacred pipe colored in the Chiefs' colors. Prayer asking for the faces of children and the red road and the day of quiet. Path to Catholic sainthood opened 2017. Name taken from the Lakota tradition of Black Elk — the elk whose power moves through the world in ways human beings can feel but not always see.

The 49ers connection documented. The gold rush, the dispossession, the Black Hills, the game result, the address.

The court does not rule on whether what this exhibit contains is coincidence or design.

The court notes that the Priest's colors were already chosen before the wedding was announced.

The court notes that the Priest was already praying for the children before the children died.

The court notes that the Priest was already walking the red road before anyone knew where the road was going.

And the court asks the jury to carry those three things into the wedding program they are about to receive.

BENCH OBSERVATION

SPOCK The proceeding has now placed before this court the following sequence:

The music section established that the call has been sounding since Miriam lifted her tambourine at the edge of the water. That it traveled through Memphis and Liverpool and Nashville and a hundred stadiums. That it arrived in the Eras Tour as millions of young women made circles with their hands and placed them on the wrists of strangers.

The Biblical coda established that the twelve notes are the bride number. That music is how God has always gathered God's people. That the throne room of heaven holds the unbearable by singing.

The Black Elk record now establishes that the Priest of the wedding was already dressed for it. Already praying toward it. Already carrying the colors of the Groom's team in a vision received before the Groom's team existed.

The court does not explain how those three things belong together.

The court only notes that they do.

And invites the jury to receive what comes next.