Although the traditional Sioux nation was in its last days when Luther Standing Bear was born in the 1860s, he was raised in the ancestral manner to be a successful hunter and warrior and a respectful and productive member of Sioux society. Known as Plenty Kill, young Standing Bear belonged to the Western Sioux tribe that inhabited present-day North and South Dakota. In "My Indian Boyhood" he describes the home life and education of Indian children. Like other boys, he played with toy bows and arrows in the tipi before learning to make and use them and became schooled in the ways of animals and in the properties of plants and herbs. His life would be very different from that of his ancestors, but he was not denied the excitement of killing his first buffalo before leaving to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The general focus in Lakota oral literary research has been on content rather than process within oral traditions. In this groundbreaking study of the characteristics of Lakota oral style, Delphine Red Shirt shows how its composition and structure are reflected in the work of George Sword, who composed 245 pages of text in the Lakota language using the English alphabet. What emerges in Sword's Lakota narratives are the formulaic patterns inherent in the Lakota language that are used to tell the narratives, as well as recurring themes and story patterns. Red Shirt's primary conclusion is that this cadence originates from a distinctly Lakota oral tradition. Red Shirt analyzes historical documents and original texts in Lakota to answer the question: How is Lakota literature defined? Her pioneering work uncovers the epistemological basis of this literature, which can provide material for literary studies, anthropological and traditional linguistics, and translation studies. Her analysis of Sword's texts discloses tools that can be used to determine whether the origin of any given narrative in Lakota tradition is oral, thereby opening avenues for further research.

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The general focus in Lakota oral literary research has been on content rather than process within oral traditions. In this groundbreaking study of the characteristics of Lakota oral style, Delphine Red Shirt shows how its composition and structure are reflected in the work of George Sword, who composed 245 pages of text in the Lakota language using the English alphabet. What emerges in Sword’s Lakota narratives are the formulaic patterns inherent in the Lakota language that are used to tell the narratives, as well as recurring themes and story patterns. Red Shirt’s primary conclusion is that this cadence originates from a distinctly Lakota oral tradition. Red Shirt analyzes historical documents and original texts in Lakota to answer the question: How is Lakota literature defined? Her pioneering work uncovers the epistemological basis of this literature, which can provide material for literary studies, anthropological and traditional linguistics, and translation studies. Her analysis of Sword’s texts discloses tools that can be used to determine whether the origin of any given narrative in Lakota tradition is oral, thereby opening avenues for further research.

Bead on an Anthill is the story of a Lakota girl's experiences growing up in Nebraska and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1960s and 1970s. Raised in a home without books, Delphine Red Shirt relied on family and friends as her "books" and wove their stories into her own. Like her ancestors, she felt a powerful connection to the openness of the Plains. She participated in coming-of-age ceremonies and learned the special rules for stringing beads together and the messages conveyed by hairstyles. At the same time, Red Shirt became increasingly aware of the distance between her world and that of her ancestors. Ringing with insight and honesty, this memoir gives voice to an emerging generation of Lakota women who attempt to navigate the difficult paths of a bicultural world.Delphine Red Shirt is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and represents her tribe as a nongovernmental representative at the United Nations.

Told in their own words, "Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter" is the unforgettable story of several generations of Lakota women who grew up on the open plains of northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota. Delphine Red Shirt has delicately woven the life stories of her mother, Lone Woman, and Red Shirt's great-grandmother, Turtle Lung Woman, into a continuous narrative that succeeds triumphantly as a moving, epic saga of Lakota women from traditional times in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Especially revealing are Turtle Lung Woman's relationship with her husband, Paints His Face with Clay, her healing practice as a medicine woman, Lone Woman's hardships and celebrations growing up in the early twentieth century, and many wonderful details of their domestic lives before and during the early reservation years.