March 2023 MBR The Native American Studies Shelf

The Native American Studies Shelf

Lakhota: An Indigenous History
Rani-Henrik Andersson, author
David C. Posthumus, author
University of Oklahoma Press
2800 Venture Drive, Norman, OK 73069
www.oupress.com
9780806190754, $34.95, HC, 440pp

https://www.amazon.com/Lakhota-Indigenous-History-Civilization-American/dp/0806190752

Synopsis: The Lakhota are arguably among the best-known Native American peoples. In popular culture and even many scholarly works, they were once lumped together with others and called the Sioux. "Lakhota: An Indigenous History" tells the full story of Lakhota culture and society, from their origins to the twenty-first century, drawing on Lakhota voices and perspectives.

In Lakhota culture, "listening" is a cardinal virtue, connoting respect, and here co-authors Rani-Henrik Andersson and David C. Posthumus listen to the Lakhota, both past and present. The history of culture unfolds in this narrative as the people lived it.

Fittingly, "Lakhota: An Indigenous History" opens with an origin story, that of White Buffalo Calf Woman (Ptesanwin) and her gift of the sacred pipe to the Lakhota people. Drawing on winter counts, oral traditions and histories, and Lakhota letters and speeches, the narrative proceeds through such periods and events as early Lakhota trading, the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation, Christian missionization, the Plains Indian Wars, the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (1890), the Indian New Deal, and self-determination, as well as recent challenges like the #NoDAPL movement and management of Covid-19 on reservations.

"Lakhota: An Indigenous History" centers Lakhota experience, as when it shifts the focus of the Battle of Little Bighorn from Custer to fifteen-year-old Black Elk, or puts American Horse at the heart of the negotiations with the Crook Commission, or explains the Lakhota agenda in negotiating the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851.

The picture that emerges (of continuity and change in Lakhota culture from its distant beginnings to issues in our day) is as sweeping and intimate, and as deeply complex, as the lived history it encompasses.

Critique: Enhanced for the reader with numerous illustrations, a fourteen page Glossary, fifty-six pages of Notes, a twenty- six page Bibliography, and a twelve page Index, "Lakhota: An Indigenous History" is a definitive history that will have a very special appeal to students of Native American history and culture. Also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $22.49), "Lakhota: An Indigenous History" is an especially and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Native American History collections in general, and supplemental curriculum Lakhota History/Culture studies in particular.

Editorial Note #1: Rani-Henrik Andersson holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Tampere in Finland. He has served as the McDonnell Douglas Chair, Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki and is currently working as a Core Fellow at the University of Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He has published a number of scholarly articles about topics in Native American history, and has held a position as a visiting research fellow at Indiana University where he worked with Lakota experts Ray DeMallie and Doug Parks. Andersson is also the author of The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890 (University of Nebraska Press, 2008). (https://www.history.ucsb.edu/visiting-scholar/rani-henrik-andersson)

Editorial Note #2: David C. Posthumus holds a PhD in Anthropology and is the author of All My Relatives: Exploring Lakota Ontology, Belief, and Ritual and the novel The Legend of the Dogman. (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-zOJHbYAAAAJ)

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