Review of Cante ohitika Win (Brave-hearted Women): Images of Lakota Women from the Pine Ridge Reservation South Dakota.

Authors

Holly Rae Boomer, College of Saint Mary

Date of this Version

1992

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 12:3 (Summer 1992). Copyright © 1992 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

In Carolyn Reyer's book, Cante ohitika Win (Brave-hearted Women), the words of Debra Lynn White Plume best characterize the content of oral stories, poetry, and photographs. "I would say that there are two revolving themes that live in what I write: resistance and celebration." Reyer's book, with additional writings by White Plume and Dr. Beatrice Medicine, uses the sub~ title, "Images of Lakota Women from the Pine Ridge Reservation South Dakota," and this phrasing gives an accurate description of the resistance that the Lakota face in expressing their culture through both liturature and his~ tory. The images evoked from Reyer's collection of oral stories, poetry, and photographs reflect poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, disease, and the hardship of reservation life. But the images also portray the Lakota belief system, which celebrates spirituality and the preserva~ tion of the "tiyospaye" or extended family.