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Ethnohistory 50.2 (2003) 401-402



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Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter. By Delphine Red Shirt. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xviii + 242 pp. $26.95 cloth.)

Delphine Red Shirt, a Lakota from Pine Ridge and professor of English and American studies at Yale University, presents this complex work that combines personal narrative with linguistics, ethnography, and history. This is her second book. The first, Bead on an Anthill, is primarily autobiographical, dealing with her life growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation and her familiar relationships. Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter is another work of family biography, primarily chronicling the lives of Red Shirt's Great Grandmother, Turtle Lung Woman, and her mother, Lone Woman. Divided into three parts: Turtle Lung Woman, Lone Woman, and Death, the work is ultimately Lone Woman's story as told to Red Shirt.

More than a biography, more than an "as told to" story, this story, Red Shirt says, is also intended to "preserve the Lakota language as it was spoken by my mother's generation" (xi). The original narrative was given to Red Shirt in Lakota, her mother's first language. The work contains a significant amount of Lakota text that sometimes is translated literally and sometimes freely. Red Shirt often elaborates on the meanings of the words and phrases in the text, providing both literal translations and cultural explanations. This is primarily a work of translation, however, for there is little in the way of extended narrative in Lakota beyond a sentence or two.

The book is also ethnographic, reminiscent, at least in style and content but not in context, of Ella Deloria's Waterlily. Red Shirt utilizes Lakota songs collected and transcribed by Frances Densmore as well as ethnographic material collected in Lakota by doctor/ethnographer James Walker, [End Page 401] particularly narratives by the Lakota George (Long Knife) Sword (xi), to provide a broad understanding of Lakota culture and its transformations during the time of the lives of the main characters of the book. Sources are acknowledged in the beginning of the book, but the narrative itself is seamless with no citations indicating where or when this external ethnographic material is added and whether the source of particular information is the author, Red Shirt, the narrator, Lone Woman, the main character, Turtle Lung Woman, or outside ethnographic sources.

As ethnography, the work interweaves the story of Red Shirt's family with important events in Lakota history, beginning with the birth of Turtle Lung Woman, which coincides with the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The work deals with such topics as warfare, religion, child rearing, socialization, values, clothing, dancing, kinship terms and relationships, eating customs, use of the buffalo and horse, mourning customs, prayer, games and gender roles, the Yuwipi ceremony and the spiritual importance of stones, the kettle dance and Heyoka, rites of passage, buffalo and adoption ceremonies, and marriage with its ritual feasting. It also contains Lakota religious stories about the beginning of the world and establishment of the cardinal directions, the story of Stone Boy, Iktomi (trickster) tales, and narratives about Double Faced Woman and Crazy Buffalo.

Interwoven with information about Lakota life, the narrative focuses on the central character, Turtle Lung Woman, who was a healer, dreamer, seer, and ritual practitioner. As Lone Woman explains, "She [Turtle Lung Woman] herself was the old way, fast disappearing" (28). The narrative describes Turtle Lung Woman's growing up, her marriage, and her adaptation and resistance to new ways brought by the European incursion. Lone Woman discusses her own life in the second and third parts of the work: childhood, going to school, learning English, working in Nebraska as a migrant farmer, reservation life, rations, joining the Native American Church, and the deaths of her first husband Brooks Horse and daughter Jessica. In the epilogue, Red Shirt herself speaks movingly of her mother's death and the importance of her family relationships, language, and culture.

Beautifully written, this book not only bridges literary genres but also speaks of and to the heart, with song, poetry, intimate narrative, ethnography, spirituality, humor, and tragedy. A...

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