A warm, poignant evocation by Methodist minister Dudley of a
childhood spent on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, secure in the
home of his grandparents, from whom he received a legacy of love as
well as stories of his people and their world. Beginning in 1948,
when at age eight he was separated from his brother and sister,
Dudley recalls the first Christmas spent alone with his elderly
grandparents in their battered three-room house. Impoverished
though they were, the couple's affection for one another meant a
generally harmonious household, with daily rituals including the
grandfather bringing a morning cup of coffee to his wife in bed.
Their relative isolation meant hardships as well, but they still
were part of a community, so when both elders were hospitalized
briefly, a friend came to stay with the child, and Dudley's
grandmother was able to practice Christian charity in turn by
visiting a young man on his deathbed. An Episcopalian for whom
prayer at home required family participation, the elderly woman
also recalled vividly for her grandson the last Ghost Dance held on
the reservation, which she attended as a child. Her faith was her
strength as cataracts obscured her vision, and, as he matured, that
faith helped the author to understand the importance of religion in
his own life. Even through difficult teenage years in which he had
to care for his grandparents in their increasing infirmity while
attending a distant high school, Dudley found that his
grandparents' presence and stories offered a sustaining sense of
continuity and belonging. Tender but honest - a memorable family
portrait in which the everyday merges with distinctive elements of
a Sioux heritage, with the delicate innocence of youth fully
retained. (Kirkus Reviews)
From the time he was three years old, in 1943, Joseph Iron Eye
Dudley was raised by his grandparents on the Yankton Sioux
Reservation. Their tiny weatherbeaten house, nestled in a bend of
Choteau Creek on the rolling South Dakota prairie, is where he grew
up, and this moving reminiscence recreates with warmth and candor a
childhood poor in material goods but overflowing with spiritual
wealth.
"Much has been written," says the author, "by and about Native
American people who are active in political and social movements,
and much has been said about the appalling conditions of
reservation life. This book is about the common, quiet people who
never make the headlines or find their names in print. They are the
backbone of the reservations, the ones who pass on the values that
make Native American what they are. This story of my grandparents
reminds us that there is a spirit in people which enables them to
rise above the potential devastation of poverty and racism into a
life marked by humor and laughter, one that radiates love and
kindness."
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