Heather Rowe AIS 430 Returning to the Lakota Way Book Reflection 4/28/2024. Returning to the Lakota Way Returning to the Lakota Way is a short publication written by Joseph M. Marshall, III, a well-known indigenous author and tribal member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. In this book, Marshall complies and shares some of the most well-known and influential Lakota stories told throughout the centuries, with each chapter featuring a different short story. Throughout this novel, he also discusses the meanings and lessons each story strives to teach the reader, their impact on Marshall himself while he was growing up on the reservation and analyzes how each lesson can be incorporated into our modern day. This summary of Marshall’s collection of stories …show more content…
“Elders, of course, were the best source of information and knowledge in the Lakota world [.] In reality elders were the repository of knowledge: walking libraries, if you will, and a most precious resource.” (J. M. Marshall III, 2013, ch. 6. The aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid afor Marshall’s book takes a step further to compile these stories together to share the views, values, and traditions of the Lakota people, while also sharing little bits of his wisdom and experience along the way. However, while each story can have different meanings based on its intended lesson and the variations of interpretation that come with word-of-mouth storytelling, the overall tone and purpose of this book lies within Marshall’s emphasis on the importance of oral tradition and the discussion of each story. This brings us to the second purpose of this novel, which lies in Marshall’s analysis of each story and how the use of indigenous knowledge can be beneficial to our modern society. While each story can have different meanings and interpretations, the overall tone and purpose of …show more content…
Although he never explicitly says so in the book, it is heavily implied throughout each chapter that Marshall feels our new generation is not as resilient nor hardworking as before. “Everything we had or enjoyed, even the simplest necessity, was produced or obtained with some amount of effort.” (J. M. Marshall III, 2013, ch. 4. The adage of the adage. With the fast-paced world of technology and a fixation on more materialistic needs or wants, Marshall implies that we have lost our sense of self-reliance as well as our empathy towards others, with the need for indigenous ideologies and values being needed now more than ever. While reading through Returning to the Lakota Way, I found the format of the book to be both an interesting one and a refreshing one. Unlike the previous two novels, Marshall’s presentation of ideas and heavy reliance on storytelling varies far differently from that of Wildcats and Estes, in that he carries both more wisdom and understanding of the current world. While both Wildcat and Estes’s publications were informative and inspiring for the movement towards indigenous advocacy and enlightenment, I found the writing style to be at times overbearing in its presentation of information, as well as the
Native Americans have been fighting till this day for freedom. Millions of Native Americans have lost their lives fighting for freedoms and their lands. So far, not much have been done to the Native Americans and they have not achieved everything they had hoped for. Most Native Americans are still living on reservations and government are doing little to help them. A book titled “Lakota Women” by Mary Crow Dog takes us into the lives of the Native Americans, her childhood, adulthood, and her experiences of being an Indian woman.
According to Tyler Troudt once said, “The past cannot be changed forgotten to edit or erased it can only be accepted.” In the book The Lakota Way, it is talking about all the old stories that no one talks about anymore. Some of the stories are about respect, honor, love, sacrifice, truth, bravery. Joseph M. Marshall III wrote this story so that young adults around the world and mainly the Lakota people know their culture, so they knew all the stories about the people long ago. What the author is writing about is all information that today’s generation will never know about the stories because most of the elder that even knew or know the stories have passed away or the young people just are not interested in listening to them anymore.
Winona Wheeler’s essay, “Cree Intellectual Traditions in History” analyzes the oral history of First Nations Elders. She specifically questions the identities of the Elders telling their story and how they have attained the stories that they are telling. Wheeler’s thesis is that the Elders are not mere storages of knowledge, they are humans. And as the days go on, few of them remain which makes it even more relevant to take in what they have and pass it on to the newer generations.
In the Lakota Way, Marshall teaches many different virtues that all are important to being a good person, but respect shines above them all. It is at the cornerstone of every virtue the author puts forth. It is clear in every story told by Marshall and in every lesson taught in The Lakota Way. Without at least a modicum of respect, the virtues taught by the Lakota would be less valuable to us as a society.
King, Thomas. “Let Me Entertain You. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 61-89. Print.
Within Lakota Woman, by Mary Crow Dog, a Lakota woman speaks of her story about growing up in the 60s and 70s and shares the details of the difficulties she and many other Native Americans had to face throughout this time period. Although Native Americans encountered numerous challenges throughout the mid twentieth century, they were not the only ethnic group which was discriminated against; African Americans and other minority groups also had to endure similar calamities. In order to try to gain equality and eliminate the discrimination they faced, such groups differed with their inclusion or exclusion of violence.
It is not out of line to expect Native Americans to live like their ancestors, and I agree with the way that O'Nell made the government look like the wrongdoers. She talks like "indians" are just part of stories or like they have not kept up with the times. This book points out many of the problems for native americans by bringing out problems in identity, culture, and depression dealing with the Flathead Tribe in Montana. The book is divided into three parts to accomplish this. Part 1 is about the American government's policies that were put on the reservations and how it affected the culture of the Flathead Tribe attached to that reservation. This is the base for is to come in the next two parts, which talk about how lonliness an pity tie into the identity and depression.
Significantly, Welch deconstructs the myth that Plains Indian women were just slaves and beasts of burden and presents them as fully rounded women, women who were crucial to the survival of the tribal community. In fact, it is the women who perform the day-to-day duties and rituals that enable cultural survival for the tribes of...
The depiction of Native Americans to the current day youth in the United States is a colorful fantasy used to cover up an unwarranted past. Native people are dressed from head to toe in feathers and paint while dancing around fires. They attempt to make good relations with European settlers but were then taken advantage of their “hippie” ways. However, this dramatized view is particularly portrayed through media and mainstream culture. It is also the one perspective every person remembers because they grew up being taught these views. Yet, Colin Calloway the author of First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, wishes to bring forth contradicting ideas. He doesn’t wish to disprove history; he only wishes to rewrite it.
The three parts of Joseph Marshall’s The Lakota Way that are the most important are love, sacrifice, and bravery. All three are a part of an average person’s life and are virtues people admire, worldwide. Love, the most important of the virtues, is an emotion, that is shown in unique ways; it is shared between parent and child, between spouses, and between friends. Sacrifice is an action word, that comes from within yourself, just like love, people sacrifice in unique ways. The final important virtue is bravery; bravery is a big step, it shows how much courage one has, how much strength they can put into something horrifying, hard, or somber. These are values that are a part of Lakota culture, and they are respected and practiced everyday.
Throughout ancient history, many indigenous tribes and cultures have shown a common trait of being hunter/gatherer societies, relying solely on what nature had to offer. The geographical location influenced all aspects of tribal life including, spirituality, healing philosophy and healing practices. Despite vast differences in the geographical location, reports show various similarities relating to the spirituality, healing philosophy and healing practices of indigenous tribal cultures.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will discuss the major themes of the book and why the author wrote it, it will describe Native American society, its values and its beliefs and how they changed and it will show how Native Americans views other non-Natives.
The oral tradition serves the important function of maintaining the people, several oral biographies that permeate every aspect of the believing individual's existence. From a Native American's educational experience, the oral tradition provides instruction in the culture and beliefs of the people, transmits a sense of self, kinship, and tribal 6 identity; helps establish a close relationship with nature; unifies tribal history; explains ambiguities and natural phenomena; and teaches maintenance of the ways of the group. In short, the oral tradition provides the Native American with a way of life; a sense of self. In a sense, they