Ella Cara Deloria devoted much of her life to the study of the language and culture of the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota). The Dakota Way of Life is the result of the long history of her ethnographic descriptions of traditional Dakota culture and social life. Deloria was the most prolific Native scholar of the greater Sioux Nation, and the results of her work comprise an essential source for the study of the greater Sioux Nation culture and language. For years she collected material for a study that would document the variations from group to group. Tragically, her manuscript was not published during her lifetime, and at the end of her life all of her major works remained unpublished. Deloria was a perfectionist who worked slowly and cautiously, attempting to be as objective as possible and revising multiple times. As a result, her work is invaluable. Her detailed cultural descriptions were intended less for purposes of cultural preservation than for practical application. Deloria was a scholar through and through, and yet she never let her dedication to scholarship overwhelm her sense of responsibility as a Dakota woman, with family concerns taking precedence over work. Her constant goal was to be an interpreter of an American Indian reality to others. Her studies of the Sioux are a monument to her talent and industry.

Discusses the tragic loss of over six hundred Dakota children after the U.S. Dakota War of 1862.

Ella Deloria (1889?1971), one of the first Native students of linguistics and ethnography in the United States, grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation on the northern Great Plains and was trained by Franz Boas at Columbia University. Dakota Texts presents a rich array of Sioux mythology and folklore in its original language and in translation. Originally published in 1932 by the American Ethnological Society, this work is a landmark contribution to the study of the Sioux tribes.

A child of a typical 1950s suburb unearths her mother's hidden heritage, launching a rich and magical exploration of her own identity and her family's powerful Native American past.

Ornately decorated objects created by Dakota women -- cradleboards, clothing, animal skin containers -- served more than a utilitarian function. They tell the story of colonization, genocide, and survival. Colette Hyman traces the changes in the lives of Dakota women, starting before the arrival of whites and covering the fur trade years, the years of treaties and shrinking lands, the brutal time of removal, starvation, and shattered families after 1862, and then the transition to reservation life, when missionaries and government agents worked to turn the Dakota into Christian farmers. The decorative work of Dakota women reflected all of this: native organic dyes and quillwork gave way to beading and needlework, items traditionally decorated for family gifts were also produced to sell to tourists and white collectors, work on cradleboards and animal skin bags shifted to the ornamenting of hymnals and the creation of star quilts.

2021 Scholarly Writing Award in the Saskatchewan Book Awards This book presents two of the most important traditions of the Dakota people, the Red Road and the Holy Dance, as told by Samuel Mniyo and Robert Goodvoice, two Dakota men from the Wahpeton Dakota Nation near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Their accounts of these central spiritual traditions and other aspects of Dakota life and history go back seven generations and help to illuminate the worldview of the Dakota people for the younger generation of Dakotas, also called the Santee Sioux. "The Good Red Road," an important symbolic concept in the Holy Dance, means the good way of living or the path of goodness. The Holy Dance (also called the Medicine Dance) is a Dakota ceremony of earlier generations. Although it is no longer practiced, it too was a central part of the tradition and likely the most important ceremonial organization of the Dakotas. While some people believe that the Holy Dance is sacred and that the information regarding its subjects should be allowed to die with the last believers, Mniyo believed that these spiritual ceremonies played a key role in maintaining connections with the spirit world and were important aspects of shaping the identity of the Dakota people. In The Red Road and Other Narratives of the Dakota Sioux, Daniel Beveridge brings together Mniyo and Goodvoice's narratives and biographies, as well as songs of the Holy Dance and the pictographic notebooks of James Black (Jim Sapa), to make this volume indispensable for scholars and members of the Dakota community.

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.

When Blue Bird and her grandmother leave their family?s camp to gather beans for the long, threatening winter, they inadvertently avoid the horrible fate that befalls the rest of the family. Luckily, the two women are adopted by a nearby Dakota community and are eventually integrated into their kinship circles. Ella Cara Deloria?s tale follows Blue Bird and her daughter, Waterlily, through the intricate kinship practices that created unity among her people. Waterlily, published after Deloria?s death and generally viewed as the masterpiece of her career, offers a captivating glimpse into the daily life of the nineteenth-century Sioux. This new Bison Books edition features an introduction by Susan Gardner and an index.

"I've known about Ike Blasingame all my life, knew many of his fellow punchers, white and Indian. Ike was certainly a salty representative of the Texas bronc twister when he came North with that most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador. . . . [He] takes the reader across the treacherous Missouri River as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the round-ups, the prairie fires. . . . There is the authentic smell and feel of the Northern cow country of fifty years ago in the story Ike Blasingame tells."-Mari Sandoz"Here is one of the most gripping Western tales since Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy was published in 1903. The telling is considerably like Adams'-warm, human, flavorful. The author, a one-time Matador ranch cowboy, . . . lived his story, and he tells it straight in the language of the cow country without contrivance."-New York Times"Many of the cowboys who have written about their experiences never really looked at any wider segment of the cattle business than was visible between their horses' ears, but Ike Blasingame did. He paints a big picture without omitting details."-New York Herald-Tribune

Ella Cara Deloria devoted much of her life to the study of the language and culture of the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota). The Dakota Way of Life is the result of the long history of her ethnographic descriptions of traditional Dakota culture and social life. Deloria was the most prolific Native scholar of the greater Sioux Nation, and the results of her work comprise an essential source for the study of the greater Sioux Nation culture and language. For years she collected material for a study that would document the variations from group to group. Tragically, her manuscript was not published during her lifetime, and at the end of her life all of her major works remained unpublished. Deloria was a perfectionist who worked slowly and cautiously, attempting to be as objective as possible and revising multiple times. As a result, her work is invaluable. Her detailed cultural descriptions were intended less for purposes of cultural preservation than for practical application. Deloria was a scholar through and through, and yet she never let her dedication to scholarship overwhelm her sense of responsibility as a Dakota woman, with family concerns taking precedence over work. Her constant goal was to be an interpreter of an American Indian reality to others. Her studies of the Sioux are a monument to her talent and industry.