In this autobiography, Viola Burnette braids the history of the Lakota people with the story of her own life as an Iyeska , or mixed-race Indian. Bringing together her years growing up on a ...reservation, her work as a lawyer and legal advocate for Native peoples, and her woman’s perspective, she draws the reader into an intelligent and intimate conversation.
The Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868 changed everything for the Sioux. When Burnette was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the late 1930s, her people were still striving to make sense of how to live under the impoverished conditions created by the imposed land restrictions. Like most Native children at that time, she was forced by federal law to attend boarding school and assimilate into white culture. Her story reveals the resulting internal conflict that she and her people faced in embracing their own identity in a world where those in authority taught that speaking Lakota and being Indian were wrong. After a difficult jump into adulthood, Burnette emerged from an abusive marriage and, while raising four children, enrolled in junior college in her thirties and law school in her forties. She went on to become an advocate for women subjected to domestic violence and the first attorney general for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
Borne out under the far-reaching effects of the government-enforced restructuring of her people, Burnette’s inspiring narrative of strength and determination makes clear the importance of understanding history from a Native standpoint.
“I am an Iyeska and I am assimilated, but on my own terms. I choose when, where, and how I use the knowledge and skills I have learned. As long as we continue to teach our children and grandchildren the language, values, and traditions of the Lakota people, we will survive.”—from the book
This article examines the materiality of the Ghost Dance shirt - ógle wakȟáŋ kiŋ - among the Lakota, and its associated symbols and functions. By cross-referencing sources on the Ghost Dance to ...sources on traditional Lakota belief and ritual, it is shown that the practice of interrituality - the use of established ritual elements and acts in novel contexts - enabled traditional ritual dynamics and ontological understandings to be actualized and materialized in the Ghost Dance. This gave it performative powers and a sense of cultural familiarity with which participants could navigate a turbulent period with recognizable ritual elements. Considering the primacy of visions, concepts such as wakȟáŋ, wašíčuŋ, tȟúŋ, and wótȟawe, protective designs, and ritual processes, the article problematizes a tradition-innovation dichotomy, suggesting instead that ritual materiality mediated between the two. Likewise, it is argued that the protective nature of the shirts was primarily existential and spiritual rather than exhibitions of militarism.
The interest of nineteenth-century Lakotas in the sun, moon, and stars was an essential part of their never-ending quest to understand their world.The Spirit and the Skypresents a survey of the ...ethnoastronomy of the nineteenth-century Lakota and relates Lakota astronomy to their cultural practices and beliefs. The center of Lakota belief is the incomprehensible, extraordinary, and sacred nature of the world in which they live. The earth beneath and the stars above constitute their holistic world.Mark Hollabaugh offers a detailed analysis of all aspects of Lakota culture that have a bearing on their astronomy, including telling time, Lakota names for the stars and constellations as they appeared on the Great Plains, and the phenomena of meteor showers, eclipses, and the aurora borealis. Hollabaugh's explanation of the cause of the aurora that occurred at the death of Black Elk in 1950 is a new contribution to ethnoastronomy.
A broad range of perspectives from Natives and non-Natives makes this book the most complete account and analysis of the Lakota ghost dance ever published. A revitalization movement that swept across ...Native communities of the West in the late 1880s, the ghost dance took firm hold among the Lakotas, perplexed and alarmed government agents, sparked the intervention of the U.S. Army, and culminated in the massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in December 1890.
Although the Lakota ghost dance has been the subject of much previous historical study, the views of Lakota participants have not been fully explored, in part because they have been available only in the Lakota language. Moreover, emphasis has been placed on the event as a shared historical incident rather than as a dynamic meeting ground of multiple groups with differing perspectives. InThe Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, Rani-Henrik Andersson uses for the first time some accounts translated from Lakota. This book presents these Indian accounts together with the views and observations of Indian agents, the U.S. Army, missionaries, the mainstream press, and Congress. This comprehensive, complex, and compelling study not only collects these diverse viewpoints but also explores and analyzes the political, cultural, and economic linkages among them.
Summary
Sporting contests between communities actively engaged in societal struggle comprise an event I call “engaged acrimony.” In these sporting contests, ideas of sport as promoting harmony get ...tested and often give way to demonstrations of vitriol that mirror actual relations. In this article, I discuss Lakota basketball teams from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as they played against neighboring white teams, examining how their responses to racism were safely expressed within and around sporting events. I analyze two of the best‐known instances of engaged acrimony using Turner's sense of performance and Butler's theory of performativity. In doing so, I offer an understanding of how Native communities can fashion an empowering response to racism.
Results from a photovoice study with 13 Lakota women found that there were numerous barriers (e.g., finding stable housing, finding a job) to reintegration following incarceration and that trauma, ...grief, and loss were identified as prominent challenges throughout attempts at reintegration. Despite tremendous aversities, Lakota women identified their ability to connect with people, nature, and culture as key sources of their strength and resilience. This research highlights the urgent need for comprehensive, culturally grounded, strengths-focused initiatives as well as structural policy change that will support Lakota and other Indigenous women’s reintegration into their communities.
Speaking Of Indians Deloria, Ella Cara; Deloria Jr., Vine
2016, 2016-01-18
eBook
Beginning with a general discussion of American Indian origins, language families, and culture areas, Deloria then focuses on her own people, the Dakotas, and the intricate kinship system that ...governed all aspects of their life. She writes, "Exacting and unrelenting obedience to kinship demands made the Dakotas a most kind, unselfish people, always acutely aware of those about them and innately courteous."Deloria goes on to show the painful transition to reservations and how the holdover of the kinship system worked against Indians trying to follow white notions of progress and success. Her ideas about what both races must do to participate fully in American life are as cogent now as when they were first written.Originally published in 1944, "Speaking of Indians" is an important source of information about Dakota culture and a classic in its elegant clarity of insight.
Broken Treatiesis a comparative assessment of Indian treaty negotiation and implementation focusing on the first decade following the United States-Lakota Treaty of 1868 and Treaty Six between Canada ...and the Plains Cree (1876). Jill St. Germain argues that the "broken treaties" label imposed by nineteenth-century observers and perpetuated in the historical literature has obscured the implementation experience of both Native and non-Native participants and distorted our understanding of the relationships between them. As a result, historians have ignored the role of the Treaty of 1868 as the instrument through which the United States and the Lakotas mediated the cultural divide separating them in the period between 1868 and 1875. In discounting the treaty historians have also failed to appreciate the broader context of U.S. politics, which undermined a treaty solution to the Black Hills crisis in 1876. In Canada, on the other hand, the "broken treaties" tradition has obscured the distinctly different understanding of Treaty Six held by Canada and the Plains Cree. The inability of either party to appreciate the other's position fostered the damaging misunderstanding that culminated in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. In the first critical assessment of the implementation of these treaties,Broken Treatiesrestores Indian treaties to a central position in the investigation of Native-non-Native relations in the United States and Canada.
The Real Rosebud Weinberg, Marjorie; Yellow Robe, Luke
2004, 2004-04-01
eBook
Her great-grandfather was a famed Lakota warrior, her father a buffalo hunter, and Rosebud Yellow Robe hosted a CBS radio show in New York City. From buffalo hunting to the hub of twentieth-century ...urban life, this book chronicles the momentous changes in the life of a prominent Plains Indian family over three generations. At the center of the story is Rosebud (1907–92), whose personal recollections, family memoirs, letters, and stories form the basis of this book.
Rosebud’s father, Chauncey Yellow Robe, was the son of a Lakota chief and had a traditional childhood until he was sent to the Carlisle Indian School, where he became an advocate for Indian education and citizenship. He was instrumental in planning the 1927 ceremony that brought his daughter into national prominence—an induction of Calvin Coolidge into the Lakota tribe, capped by Rosebud placing a feathered war bonnet on the president’s head. Marjorie Weinberg follows the young woman from Rapid City, South Dakota, to New York City, where she became a noted lecturer and teller of Indian tales (and where her broadcasting career brought her name to the attention of Orson Welles, who may indeed have used her name for his famous sled in Citizen Kane). Reflecting a lifelong interest and a friendship that provided Weinberg access to family archives and a rich reservoir of family oral tradition, The Real Rosebud offers an intimate picture of a century and a half of a remarkable Lakota family.
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