The Sicangu (burnt thighs) received their name when some of the Lakota peoples' legs were burned in a great prairie fire. The French later named them Brule, and two large groups of the band would be settled on two reservations, Rosebud and Lower Brule in South Dakota. Author Donovin Sprague examines the history of the Rosebud Sioux through a collection of photographs and personal family interviews.
Transplanted from what he considered civilization to the desolation of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, a ten-year-old boy becomes resourceful. What he learns will shape the ways in which he eventually would teach. Rather than stunting development, the reservation's history, culture and education become the stimuli for it. The boy immerses himself in the peaceful Lakota culture, reacts against its developing militancy, and eventually learns acceptance. Accustomed to team sports and ice cream shops, the fifth-grader relocates with his family to the reservation in 1957 and finds nothing familiar. He and his friends live in the poorest region of South Dakota; their only resources are their imaginations and curiosity. They explore, build, hunt, and become interested in girls. This is their story of Survival on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. It's easy for a kid to poke fun at foods and traditions different from his own. The author notes, The more experiences I had with the Lakota culture, the more respect I developed for it. I reached a point at which it was difficult to view the Lakota objectively. I'd become part of them.About the Author: David Clifford Grieser is an educator in Des Moines, Iowa. Michelangelo once described his sculpting as freeing his subjects from the marble in which they were encased. I felt the same way as I wrote: My subjects and events were encased in a past, and I wanted to eliminate the extraneous surroundings, so that readers could see them. The obstacles, then, were to extract no more or less than what I needed to be accurate. Completing the book was a testament to the Lakota people to whom I owed so much. Publisher's Website: http: //sbpra.com/DavidCliffordGriese
Thomas Biolsi's study traces the origins of racial tension between Native Americans and whites to federal laws themselves, showing how the courts have created opposing political interests along race lines.".
"Whether describing mystical visions or the rhythms of everyday life, Erickson turns the spiritual journey into a series of exciting transformations." ÑPublishers WeeklyÊ(starred review) From her childhood on an Iowa farm, Lori Erickson grew up to travel the world as a writer specializing in holy sitesjourneys that led her on an ever-deepening spiritual quest. InÊHoly Rover, she weaves her personal narrative with descriptions of a dozen pilgrimages. Along the way, Erickson encounters spiritual leaders who include the chief priest of the Icelandic pagan religion of Asatru, a Trappist monk at Thomas Merton's Gethsemani Abbey, and a Lakota retreat director at South Dakota's Bear Butte. Both irreverent and devout,ÊHoly RoverÊincludes images of holy sites around the world taken by several of the nation's leading travel photographers. Travel writer, Episcopal deacon, and author of the Holy Rover blog atÊPatheos, Erickson is an engaging guide for pilgrims eager to take a spiritual journey. Her book describes travels that changed her life and can change yours, too.
"An ideal guidebook to facing the inevitable." Foreword Reviews After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death, from Egypt's Valley of the Kings and Mayan temples, to a Colorado cremation pyre and Day of the Dead celebrations, to Maori settlements and tourist-destination graveyards. Erickson reflects on mortalityâ€"the ways we avoid it, the ways we cope with it, and the ways life is made more precious by accepting itâ€"in places as far away as New Zealand and as close as the nursing home up the street. Throughout her personal journey and her travels, Erickson  helps us to see that one of the most life-affirming things we can do is to invite death along for the ride.
The bestselling memoir of a Native American woman’s struggles and the life she found in activism: “courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational” (Publishers Weekly). Mary Brave Bird grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity. With her white father gone, she was left to endure “half-breed” status amid the violence, machismo, and aimless drinking of life on the reservation. Rebelling against all this—as well as a punishing Catholic missionary school—she became a teenage runaway. Mary was eighteen and pregnant when the rebellion at Wounded Knee happened in 1973. Inspired to take action, she joined the American Indian Movement to fight for the rights of her people. Later, she married Leonard Crow Dog, the AIM’s chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a story of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century’s leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.
