Lakota Society

by James R. Walker, Raymond J. Demallie (Editor)

As agency physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1896 to 1914, Dr. James R. Walker recorded a wealth of information on the traditional lifeways of the Oglala Sioux. Lakota Society presents the primary accounts of Walker's informants and his syntheses dealing with the organization of camps and bands, kinship systems, beliefs, ceremonies, hunting, warfare, and methods of measuring time.

Genres: Nonfiction

243 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aside from the failures of early twentieth century Anthropology and Indian Agents to actually treat their subjects as humans, this collection of writings on the Oglala Sioux attempts to collect and present honestly first-hand source material.

The collection is fascinating both as a look into the lives and linguistics of the Oglala Sioux (especially the winter counts and the first-person account of the atrocity at Wounded Knee) as well as a look into the way academics and "Agency Men" interacted with the Oglala, here erasing, there correcting, never treating the Oglala as human.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

As source material it is worth a lot more but I always look at the books I read from a reading for pleasure perspective and on that front there isn't much here due the layout. It is a mixture of notes from interviews conducted by James R Walker, somewhat explanatory introductions for each part by Raymond J De Mallie but these could have been more substantial and two longer chapters one on hunting and society and another on one interviewee's experience at the wounded knee massacre.

What I found most interesting was the references made to the Akicita who had a role as camp guardians and a sort of law officers in lakota society. This is a layer of governance and societal complexity I found most intriguing and I could not help but wonder to what extent the cultural memory of these has impact later tribal police in 20th century reservation life. What I would have loved dearly is the segment on concept of time and history and the winter(acc)counts included in the book to have been analyzed a bit more in detail and it is particularly here that an opportunity was missed to show what can be done with material handed down to us. Likewise telling us how the mentioned winter accounts were kept going until the 40 ties by family members of the one interviewed by Walker is nice but I would have loved some more context on why they did so and why they stopped. Perhaps though that would have been a whole other book, one where what is attested here is presented to current members of the Lakota nation and see what the reflection of this past would yield.

If your planning on doing further work and study on the Lakota as a people or on how such information was assembled early 20th century there is definitively much worthwhile but I can't say it is that particularly interesting as is primarily because of the layout of the book.