Book Reviews

This book was not written for the scholar but was developed for the lover of myths. "In the beginning was Inyan, who had no beginning, for he was there when there was no other, only Hanhepi, the Darkness. Inyan was soft and shapeless, but he was...

The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker by Bill Neeley is a compelling book of Quanah Parker who was born into both the red and white worlds. He was the son of a white captive woman named Cynthia Ann Parker and Comanche Chief Peta...

In "The Inconvenient Indian", Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated and utterly unconventional account of Indian-White relations in North America since initial contact.Ranging freely across the centuries and the...

As it has been known throughout history, Sioux women have been the center of tribal life and the core of the tiospaye, the extended family. They have maintained the values and traditions of Sioux culture. But, the women’s stories and experiences...

A child, an elder and the light from an ancient sky. A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers and the "old ones" still have powers beyond...

As the year 1890 wound to a close, a band of more than three hundred Lakota Sioux Indians led by Chief Big Foot made their way toward South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to join other Lakotas seeking peace. Fearing that Big Foot's band was...

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andres Resendez illuminates in his myth-shattering THE OTHER SLAVERY, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret.There was no abolitionist movement to...

Never before has the story of Sitting Bull been written and published by a lineal descendant. In Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy, Ernie LaPointe, a great-grandson of the famous Hunkpapa Lakota chief, presents the family tales and memories told to him...

Through essays, personal stories, case studies, satire, and poetry, "The Great Vanishing Act" brings together writers from around the world to explore the biological and cultural metaphor of blood quantum, the most critical issue facing Indigenous...

The interest of nineteenth-century Lakota in the sun, moon and stars was an essential part of their never-ending quest to understand the universe. The Spirit and The Sky: Lakota Visions of the Cosmos presents a survey of the ethnoastronomy of the...

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons." ~Cheyenne Proverb This is the story of how Susan La Flesche overcame racial and gender...

Discover the timeless wisdom of the Lakota people. Rich with storytelling, history and folklore, THE LAKOTA WAY expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and imparts the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life.Joseph Marshall is a member of the...

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe...

This book is an excellent overview of Lakota religious thought and practice, introducing readers to it's essential components.Through finely detailed descriptions of rituals and various types of religious figures, the author explains the significance of...

"It was the first time that the animals and birds danced to the heartbeat of Mother Earth." Animals stop and listen. A new sound is in the forest. The beat vibrates through the trees and across the meadows. What is it? Where is it coming. Muskrat and...

Against the backdrop of contemporary reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf Nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In...

"It did not occur to me at the time that I was going away to learn the ways of the white man. My idea was that I was leaving the reservation and going to stay away long enough to do some brave deed and then come home again alive. If I could just do that,...

As agency physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1896-1914, Dr. Walker recorded a wealth of information on the traditional lifeways of the Oglala Sioux. This book presents the primary accounts of his informants and his syntheses dealing with the...

Severt Young Bear stood in the light - in the center ring at powwows and other gatherings of Lakota people. As founder and for many years, lead singer of the Porcupine Singers, a traditional singing and drumming group, he also stood, figuratively, in the...

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan (as told in the classic "Neither Wolf Nor Dog"). The touching,...

Through his retelling of traditional Native American stories, Joseph Bruchac offers readers a rich mix of American Indian history, culture and values. A diverse range of Native groups is included - Tlingit, Navajo, Cree, Abenaki, Yupik, Seminole, Sioux,...

The general focus in Lakota oral literary research has been relatively in the study of content rather than the process in oral traditions. In Delphine Red Shirt’s new book, George Sword’s Warrior Narratives: Compositional Process in Lakota...

Called the "Fighting Cock of the Sioux" by U.S. soldiers, Hunkpapa warrior Gall was a great Lakota chief who, along with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, resisted efforts by the U.S. government to annex the Black Hills.It was Gall, enraged by the slaughter...

"A warrior I have been. Now it is all over, a hard time I have." ~Sitting Bull's surrender song One week after the June 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn, when news of the defeat of Custer and his 7th Cavalry troops reached the American public, Lakota...