Lakota Studies: Books

Oglala Chief Red Cloud is quoted as saying, "The white man made many promises to us, but he kept only one; he promised to take our land and he took it." Initially the method of taking Indian land was through treaties, a legitimate and acceptable agreement between Indian nations and the United States. Following the treaty period, Congress embarked on a series of legislative acts, administrative decisions, and outright confiscation of Indian lands, which resulted in the loss of millions of acres of Indian land; particularly, the land of the Lakota Sioux Indians of western South Dakota.This book describes the methods, other than treaties, that the United States used to acquire more Lakota land than the Lakota expected to lose. The book is written by a Lakota, for the Lakota, and provides the reader with a historical perspective not commonly found in most U. S. history books. If you are interested in the Lakota perspective of the federal government's Indian policies, this book is required reading.

Reaching hundreds of miles across the Great Plains, the Lakota Sioux have persevered for hundred of years. Kids will read about LaToya Brown Bull and learn from respected elder Gus Yellow Hair about little-known but vital pieces of American history. One unique practice among the Lakota Sioux is taking in kids who are not their own and making them part of a family.

In All My Relatives David C. Posthumus offers the first revisionist history of the Lakotas' religion and culture in a generation. He applies key insights from what has been called the "ontological turn," particularly the dual notions of interiority/soul/spirit and physicality/body and an extended notion of personhood, as proposed by A. Irving Hallowell and Philippe Descola, which includes humans as well as nonhumans. All My Relatives demonstrates how a new animist framework can connect and articulate otherwise disparate and obscure elements of Lakota ethnography. Stripped of its problematic nineteenth-century social evolutionary elements and viewed as an ontological or spiritual alternative, this reevaluated concept of animism for a twenty-first-century sensibility provides a compelling lens through which traditional Lakota mythology, dreams and visions, and ceremony may be productively analyzed and more fully understood. Posthumus explores how Lakota animist beliefs permeate the understanding of the real world in relation to such phenomena as the personhood of rocks, ghosts or spirits of deceased humans and animals, meteorological phenomena, familiar spirits or spirit helpers, and medicine bundles. All My Relatives offers new insights into traditional Lakota culture for a deeper and more enduring understanding of indigenous cosmology, ontology, and religion.  

Lakȟótiya Wóglaka Po! - Speak Lakota! Level 2 Textbook features even more worksheets, puzzles, and exercises- 50% larger than Level 1. The Level 2 emphasizes reading and writing. The textbook is fully integrated with listening exercises. 12 Units include: Where do you live?, How Old are You?, My Family, What are they Doing?, What do you Remember? - Lots of engaging materials for early elementary and higher. Every child should have one.

The most complete and up-to-date dictionary of Lakota available, this new edition of Eugene Buechel's classic dictionary contains over thirty thousand entries and will serve asnbsp;an essential resource for everyone interested in preserving, speaking, and writing the Lakota language today. This new comprehensive edition has been reorganized to follow a standard dictionary format and offers a range of useful features: both Lakota-to-English and English-to-Lakota sections; the grouping of principal parts of verbs; the translation of all examples of Lakota word usage; the syllabification of each entry word, followed by its pronunciation; and a lucid overview of Lakota grammar. This monumental new edition celebrates the vitality of the Lakota language today and will be a valuable resource for students and teachers alike.