WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. — Dancing, drumming, singing and the retelling of how a mysterious woman brought a message of reassurance during hard times featured in Native American religious ceremonies Wednesday that commemorated a recent rare event in Yellowstone National Park. Earlier this month, a white buffalo calf was born in the park's vast and lush Lamar Valley, where huge, lumbering bison graze by the hundreds in scenes reminiscent of the old American West.

Arvol Looking Horse, a spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Oyate peoples in South Dakota, closes out a naming ceremony Wednesday for a white buffalo calf at the headquarters of the Buffalo Field Campaign in West Yellowstone, Mont. The reported birth of the sacred calf in Yellowstone National Park fulfills a Lakota prophecy that portends better times. To the several tribes who revere American bison — they call them “buffalo” — the calf's appearance was both the fulfillment of sacred prophecy and a message to take better care of the Earth.

“It’s up to each and every one of you to make it happen for the future of our children. We must come together and bring that good energy back,” Chief Arvol Looking Horse said at the ceremonies a few miles west of Yellowstone, in far southern Montana. Looking Horse is spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle.

He describes the white buffalo calf's app.