Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives

by Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, Wahpetunwin Carolyn Schommer (Translator)

Situating Dakota language and oral tradition within the framework of decolonization, Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives makes a radical departure from other works in Indigenous history because it relies solely on Indigenous oral tradition for its primary sources and privileges Dakota language in the text.

 

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, both a historian and a member of the Dakota Nation, demonstrates the value of oral history in this bilingual presentation and skillful analysis of the stories told by the Dakota elder Eli Taylor (1908–99). Taylor lived on the Sioux Valley Reserve in Manitoba, Canada, and was adopted into Wilson’s family in 1988. He agreed to tell her his story and to share his accounts of the origins, history, and life ways of the Dakotas. In these pages he tells of Dakota history, the United States–Dakota Conflict of 1862, Dakota values, and the mysterious powers of the world. Wilson gracefully contextualizes and complements Taylor's stories with a careful analysis and distillation of the narratives. Additionally, she provides an overview of Dakota history and a substantial critique of the use of oral accounts by mainstream historians.

 

By placing Dakota oral tradition within the academic discipline of history, this powerful book illuminates the essential connections among Dakota language, history, and contemporary identity.

Genres: Indigenous, Nonfiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Waziyatawin is Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000 and earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. She also held the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at UVic. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities. She is a compelling speaker and is often invited to give talks and interviews, appearing on many radio and television programs.

Reviews

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson provides readers with a stunning example of methods used to procure and communicate indigenous oral histories. In Remember This!, Wilson claims that her “task is to fashion a place for Indigenous historical scholarship that examines an Indigenous epistemology and utilizes Indigenous sources in an academic but Indigenous-centered framework” (22). She argues that “it is absolutely essential to consult Indigenous sources” when writing indigenous histories, and critiques historians for using none or only limited quantities of Native sources (23). She adds that “this dismissal of Indigenous perspectives is symptomatic of the relationship of the colonizer to the colonized” (24). She writes that Remember This! “may be situated in the growing body of global literature on Indigenous decolonization,” placing the work within a Pan-Indian framework (13). Raising the stakes, Wilson asserts that Native American histories based on oral traditions is so important that they “can stand on their own,” countering the idea that oral histories can be only used in a supplementary role (16).

The source for the oral histories found within Remember This! is a week-long interview with Wilson’s adopted grandfather, Eli Taylor. The book starts with several chapters introducing the methods used and advocated for, and provides a brief overview of Dakota culture and history. Remember This! continues with the oral accounts of Eli Taylor—in both Dakota and English—and ends with a brief conclusion. Wilson describes the recital of oral traditions as a skill that is honed through training, and the accuracy judged by elders during regular recitals. Additionally, she claims that by including Taylor’s narrative in the indigenous tongue, her book will act as “part of a larger decolonization project and as a means of conscious resistance” (66).

As part of her argument against standard Native American history, Wilson critiques prominent authors like Calvin Martin and Richard White. She claims that these authors have reinforced Native American stereotypes by describing indigenous stories as “mythic” and calling them “circular thinkers.” In the case of Martin, she claims that he has spurred damaging debates surrounding Native Americans and their relationship with the environment. She also counter’s Whites argument that historians of indigenous groups need not worry about learning an indigenous language because few documents are written in native tongues, few speakers remain, and that the historical language differs from contemporary language. Wilson responds by comparing this argument to European studies (imagine a French historian who doesn’t know French!) and by claiming that White is making it “legitimate to ignore the voices of Indigenous people if those voices are in Indigenous languages” (25).

Although a valuable work on oral traditions among indigenous groups, Remember This! can be improved. First, Wilson does not do much more than copy down oral histories, claiming that the stories will “stand on their own” (12). But is it not the job of a historian to interpret sources? For this reason, Remember This! might be better thought of as a sourcebook. Additionally, Wilson’s argument that oral histories can stand alone is not very convincing. Even Devon Mihesuah, her mentor, has stated that “using the Native voice exclusively may not yield a precise picture of past events,” and asserts that oral histories should be used congruently with other sources.

[Andy Pandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson gets in the way of Eli Taylor's stories at times, but maybe that is just my perception. It is not for me to evaluate this work: the real importance of it is in putting the Dakota language into print, unique diacritics and all. Let the language live! Hopefully young Dakota people use this book as a resource, now and going forward.

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another attempt at explaining Dakota history to a wider audience has fallen short in Waziyatawin's Remember This!. It's a collection of oral stories told by Dakota elder Eli Taylor and captured on audio files by Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, a Dakota from the Upper Sioux Community in southwest Minnesota.

Waziyatawin explains extensively the problems with white academics trying to study Indigenous languages and oral traditions and histories and expresses disappointment that more Indigenous stories aren't told by Indigenous people. It's similar to the previous book of hers that I've read, What Does Justice Look Like? with a theme of restoring justice to Dakota people and letting them tell their own histories.

The focus of the book is supposed to be on Canadian Dakota elder Eli Taylor's stories about his childhood, coming-of-age and views on the Native past, present and future. However, Waziyatawin spent the majority of the time speaking over Eli Taylor's narrative, doing the exact same thing to her elder that she claims non-Natives do to Natives all the time.

The stories themselves were somewhat interesting, if out of context for a non-Native who knows little about what he was explaining orally. And Waziyatawin attempts to provide historical and cultural context for them, but she doesn't do it very well and instead sounds narcissistic and academic.

She talks about intellectuals being bad, but isn't she an intellectual herself now? Her books are filled with this kind of hypocrisy. She has become part of the system that she purports to dislike, that of the mindset that having a Ph.D. enables you to speak about whatever you want. She thinks she can speak on behalf of others or a community, speaking over others, even, in trying to synthesize what someone has already said, generally running her mouth as an authority figure with a Ph.D. Waziyatawin also emphasizes talking to people and giving purely oral accounts on Native history but even she doesn't actually do that and quotes other Native written sources.

(And on second thought, why would Waziyatawin think it would be a good idea to change oral stories to written ones to sell in a book form? That seems like it also goes against Dakota tradition, which she refers to so much. And she frequently refers to African sources to back up Native American ones, which also undermines her point about using only Native sources as a way to decolonize the mainstream academic world.)

In the works of hers that I've read, I've been confused as to who Waziyatawin's audience is. If it's Dakota people, this is probably nothing new, at least the basic lessons and stories. If it's non-Natives, specifically white people, her message is vague and unclear and aggressive to the point that they probably aren't willing to listen. It's not a colonized person's responsibility to teach white people about oppression they've faced, but at the same time it needs to be put in a way that the non-Native can understand in this case. Plus, she has good ideas, but she's losing me in all of her excessive commentary and opinions.