Dance Lodges of the Omaha People: Building from Memory (review)

Originally published in 2001 by Garland Press, Dance Lodges of the Omaha People (New York) was released in paperback by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008 with a new afterword by the author. It is an interesting ethnohistorical study of an institution that developed after the creation of the Omaha reservation in the 1850s. Dance lodges, the descendants of earlier earth lodges, were round, high-peaked wooden structures that were located at various distances from the town of Macy, Nebraska, where the tribal offices were based. Using a mixture of archival resources and oral histories, the author identified eight of these buildings and described in detail the structures as well as the events and ceremonies that they housed.

The dance lodges are an intriguing institution for many reasons. As Awakuni-Swetland points out, they could be looked at as representing assimilation or resistance and perhaps they did a little of both. While mimicking the earth lodges in many interior aspects, the outward appearance of the dance lodges more closely mirrored that of other large gathering halls in many Euro-American towns throughout the Midwest. Constructed from wood, some of the lodges had windows and cupolas, and some were whitewashed, so they would not have looked out of place in off-reservation communities. At the same time, these buildings held both social and religious events important to Omaha culture—from handgames and social occasions to feasts and observances that were more spiritual in nature, such as healing ceremonies, sacred dancing, and Native American Church services. While the exterior may have seemed standard issue Midwestern, the interior and activities were clearly Omaha.

Not being a stagnant institution, the amount of use the lodges received varied over time. The ones Awakuni-Swetland documents were mainly constructed around the turn of the twentieth century or later, and with one exception, all had fallen into disrepair by the end of World War II. During their heydays, however, their use was affected by everything from local settlement patterns to nationwide New Deal policies and World War II, and the results of these different forces are carefully detailed in the book.

This attention to diachronic change and the appreciation of culture as a changing entity are two aspects of the book that will appeal most to oral historians and ethnohistorians. While there are both literal and figurative snapshots of the lodges at particular points in time, Awakuni-Swetland considers the buildings within their ongoing historical contexts. The book is arranged accordingly, with chapters addressing the period before 1890, the years between 1890–1930 and 1930–60, and then the recent era following 1960.

While this chronological treatment of the material is very effective, its linearity is also a very Euro-American or Western approach to presentation, but that is balanced elsewhere in the book. Awakuni-Swetland points out that, in Omaha culture, a clockwise progression from an Eastern starting point is a traditional way of orienting information, and he utilizes that throughout the work to organize other parts of the publication. It is an interesting and very useful way of incorporating a part of the Omaha worldview into the book.

As was noted earlier, while a portion of the research was based on archival resources, such as reports, ethnographic notes, and photographs, much of the work resulted from the author’s interviews with Omaha elders who had personally seen and experienced the dance lodges. It is their words and recollections, passed on to readers by Awakuni-Swetland, that give this study its real depth. The author is very respectful of the elders and their memories, and that is apparent throughout the book in his treatment of the material. The aspect of this work that will perhaps be of most interest to oral historians is that Awakuni-Swetland includes the transcripts of selected interviews as appendices at the end of the book, thus allowing readers to view the oral histories for themselves and compare them to...