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Zitkala-Sa wrestled with the conflicting influences of American Indian and white culture throughout her life. Raised on a Sioux reservation, she was educated at boarding schools that enforced assimilation and was witness to major events in white-Indian relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In evocative prose laced with political savvy, she forces new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions, and customs of both Sioux and white cultures and raises issues of assimilation, identity, and race relations that remain compelling today.
American Indian Stories (1921) is a collection of stories and
essays from Yankton Dakota writer Zitkala-Sa. Published while
Zitkala-Sa was at the height of her career as an artist and
activist, American Indian Stories collects the author's personal
experiences, the legends and stories passed down through Sioux oral
tradition, and her own reflections on the mistreatment of American
Indians nationwide. In "My Mother," Zitkala-Sa remembers the walk
she would take with her mother to the river, where they would
gather water to use in their wigwam. This simple chore becomes a
cherished tradition between the two, allowing Zitkala-Sa's mother
to educate her on the circumstances that led their people to the
reservation, depriving them of land and life itself. "The Legends"
traces Zitkala-Sa's childhood experience of learning from the oral
tradition passed down from the Dakota elders. In "The Coffee
Making," she remembers the first time she made coffee. While her
mother has gone out for the day, an elder pays a visit to their
wigwam. Remembering that her mother usually makes coffee for
visitors, Zitkala-Sa attempts to play hostess to her visitor, who
humors her and takes the time to share stories about his life and
their people. American Indian Stories is a charming and politically
conscious collection of stories from one of the leading American
Indian writers of her generation, a committed activist and true
voice for change who saw through her own eyes the lives and
experiences of countless others. With a beautifully designed cover
and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Zitkala-Sa's
American Indian Stories is a classic of American Indian literature
reimagined for modern readers.
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Old Indian Legends (Paperback)
Zitkala-Sa; Contributions by Mint Editions
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Old Indian Legends (1901) is a collection of traditional stories
from Yankton Dakota writer Zitkala-Sa. Published while Zitkala-Sa
was just beginning her career as an artist and activist, Old Indian
Legends collects fourteen traditional legends and stories passed
down through Sioux oral tradition. Intending to keep the stories or
her people alive, Zitkala-Sa popularized and protected these
cultural treasures for generations to come. In "Iktomi and the
Ducks," spider-trickster spirit Iktomi befriends a group of ducks
by playing them music to dance to. Gaining their trust, he sends
them into a dancing frenzy causing them to break their necks, after
which he takes them to his teepee to cook a meal. When a tree
branch snaps outside, distracting Iktomi, a pack of wolves moves in
for a feast of their own. In "Iktomi's Blanket," a starving Iktomi
prays to Inyan for a blessing of food. Stumbling across a deer
carcass, he believes his prayers have been answered and prepares a
fire to roast the deer meat over. Feeling a chill, however, he goes
to his teepee for a blanket, leaving the fire unattended.
Throughout her collection, Zitkala-Sa faithfully and respectfully
retells the stories of her people. Old Indian Legends is a charming
compilation from one of the leading American Indian writers of her
generation, a committed activist and true voice for change who saw
through her own eyes the lives and experiences of countless others.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset
manuscript, this edition of Zitkala-Sa's Old Indian Legends is a
classic of American Indian literature reimagined for modern
readers.
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938), better known by her pen name,
Zitkala-Sa, was a Native American writer, editor, musician, teacher
and political activist. She was born and raised on the Yankton
Sioux Reservation in South Dakota by her mother. Zitkala-Sa lived a
traditional lifestyle until the age of eight when she left her
reservation to attend Whites Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker
mission school in Indiana. She went on to study for a time at
Earlham College in Indiana and the New England Conservatory of
Music in Boston. A considerable talent, Bonnin co-composed the
first American Indian grand opera, The Sun Dance in 1913. After
working as a teacher at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, she
began publishing short stories and autobiographical vignettes. Her
autobiographical writings were serialized in Atlantic Monthly and,
later, published in a collection called American Indian Stories in
1921. Her first book, Old Indian Legends (1901), is a collection of
folktales that she gathered during her visits home to the Yankton
Reservation. Her other works include Stories of Iktomi and Other
Legends of the Dakotas (1901) and Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians
(1924).
In the mythology of the Lakota and other Oceti Sakowin peoples,
Iktomi is a spider-trickster spirit and cultural hero. In the vast
wilderness of the American Midwest, Iktomi experiences a series of
humorous and instructive trials that illuminate humanity's
relationship with nature. In Old Indian Legends, Zitkála-Sá uses
her voice and expansive traditional knowledge to elevate the
stories of her people.
Combining personal experience with traditional storytelling,
Zitkála-Sá reflects on her life as a young woman raised on the
Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota and educated at a Quaker
school in Indiana. Whether remembering her mother, reflecting on
the importance of legends, or recalling her first time making
coffee, Zitkála-Sá, in American Indian Stories, uses her voice to
elevate her people.
Oral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native
American cosmology. Not only have they been - and continue to be -
an essential part of handing down Native American customs, norms,
beliefs, and cultural histories, but they also form a communal
mythic discourse. This discourse is not a "fixed text," but rather
a dynamic process of interactive relations that are developed over
generations of experience, and passed from relation to relation and
generation to generation. In this sense, the traditional structures
of mythic discourse serve an integrative function: to form a
coherent basis for communal identity in terms of a shared set of
fundamental ideas and beliefs expressed in multiple forms. The oral
traditions and myths recorded in this book are part of the communal
mythic discourse of the Lakota Sioux people. Originally collected
and recorded at the close of the nineteenth century by two Native
language speakers - Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala Sa - these oral
traditions provide some of the least distorted or colonially
disrupted examples of the Lakota Sioux communal mythic discourse.
Containing over 40 oral traditions, Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths
brings together into a single volume these remarkable myths and
legends. Edited and with a forward by Peter N. Jones, Ph.D., Lakota
Sioux Legends and Myths is a welcome and refreshing addition to the
literature. Once again the beauty, depth, and knowledge contained
within the Lakota Sioux oral traditions can speak for themselves.
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