Review of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance Edited by Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and David E. Wilkins

Authors

Beth R. Ritter, University of Nebraska at OmahaFollow

Date of this Version

Spring 2004

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 24, No. 2, Spring 2004, pp. 133.

Comments

Copyright 2004 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

From our current vantage point, the true legacy of Vine Deloria Jr.'s scholarship and activism can neither be fully measured nor overstated. We know with certainty, however, that the landscape of Native American scholarship has been permanently altered-for the best. Native Voices honors Deloria's contributions through the presentation of original Native scholarship inspired by his model. As its editors observe, "Deloria has influenced a whole generation of younger Indian scholars to be self-consciously indigenous thinkers-to reclaim an American Indian intellectual tradition, along with a political activism rooted in the oral traditions of our peoples and the wisdom of our elders and ancestors." The American Indian intellectual tradition resuscitated by Deloria is alive and well within the chapters of this volume.

Edited and written by an impressive array of contemporary Native scholars and artists, the volume is divided into four parts emphasizing the themes of Native identity and resistance. Only a few chapters deal directly with Plains subject matter. Clara Sue Kidwell explores the ethnoastronomy (star knowledge) of several Plains tribes (the Pawnees, Wichitas, Osages, and Lakotas) as well as Native perspectives on the Medicine Wheel. Henrietta Mann provides an excellent overview of American Indian religious freedom, including discussion of important Plains sacred sites: Bear Butte and the Lakotas' Mato-tipila, or Bear's Lodge ("Devil's Tower"). George Tinker raises strong concerns about non-Indian (i.e., "New Age") appropriation and transformation of Lakota spirituality and ceremony, which he considers the "final conquest." The remainder of the chapters are broadly applicable to Plains scholars on a number of levels, with especially strong contributions in the areas of law, history, religion, and cultural studies.

This volume should be required reading for upper division undergraduate as well as graduate level Native American Studies courses. It will also prove highly useful to a broad variety of scholars and educated lay people interested in Native American Studies. Native Voices is a fitting tribute to the legacy of the "Dean of Native American Studies," the one the editors reverently refer to as "Coyote Old Man."