Why the Lakota Still Have Their Own: Ella Deloria’s Dakota Texts

J U L I A N R I C E Florida Atlantic University Whythe Lakota Still Have Their Own: Ella Deloria’s Dakota Texts The themes of a Lakota oral narrative may be discovered and recreated by the close reading and explication applicable to a written text. But it must be remembered that these narratives were not set down or recited in exactly the same way on every occasion. The act of telling is a vital “theme,” immediately present for the original audience but absent for the physically abstracted reader. Since the themes of Lakota stories emphasize the dominant, perhaps the predominant virtue of wacantognaka (generosity), a storyteller manifests that virtue by giving or transmitting the values and vision of the story to his listeners. He speaks directly to them and adjusts the manner and the substance of his telling on the basis of their bodily and vocal responses. The act of giving has a clear purpose, that of most significant literature, whether or not the writer is conscious of it. The voice coming through the narrator wishes to perpetuate a conscious­ ness without which subsequent generations will be unable to realize their humanity. In 1931-32, when Ella Deloria collected her Dakota Texts, the survival of Lakol Wicoh’an, Lakota ways, was likely to be considered doubtful by many Lakota under reservation conditions, but the telling of the stories renewed the spirit of Lakota values and Lakota symbolic expres­ sion. Many of Ms. Deloria’s stories must be interpreted in the light of a 1930s’ reservation outlook, but most of the same problems and attitudes still exist, so that we may consider the stories in a social context that depends on a continuing relationship between Indians and whites.1 The stories also offer a synchronic view of the world in which the historical understanding is necessarily contained within an external vision of human behavior, metaphysical relation, and spiritual development. 206 Western American Literature Many of the “Dakota texts” emphasize the necessity of sacrifice to generate sacred knowledge in others. The familiar Lakota sun-wise circuit passes through conflict and adversity, symbolized by the West and North, to enlightenment at the East. But illumination by itself is insufficient, “lazy” like the East wind, Yanpa, unless it is transformed to productivity at the final point, the South. The storyteller, like the South wind, Okaga, is an artist whose purpose is to initiate growth in those whom his verbal breath can quicken.2 An obvious technique of helping people to fulfill their potential as vehicles of creative power is to show them how not to achieve this. The Iktomi stories among the Lakota emphasize the trickster’s sterile selfishness. Unlike tricksters of other tribes, at least as they have been widely interpreted, Iktomi is not a culture hero and never acts consciously to benefit others.3 In the first story in Dakota Texts, “Iktomi Conquers the Iya,” Iktomi alerts a tribe of people (including the teller’s audience) only because he wishes to destroy a competing predator, the monster Iya. Ikto is an abso­ lute egotist who lives within the confines of an insatiable need to humiliate others. He travels “toke-ecacaor at random, according to the convention in the first sentence, rather than purposefully to help the people as would an herbalist, scout, hunter, or warrior. The convention of ending every declarative sentence, such as this first one with ske or keyapi, “they say,” implies that the teller subordinates his potential egotism to serve the con­ tinuity of the tradition. Near the beginning of the first story, Iktomi and Iya lie about their origins because they refuse to acknowledge powers older and greater than themselves. In the same way missionaries have tried to convince the Lakota that the Christian way is superior to other ways. Since Lakota listeners know the origins of Iya and Iktomi from their oral tradi­ tion, the spectacle of a monster and a trickster inflating their identities in separate genesis myths has a catharticallyhumorous relevance: “And then/ ‘Well,/ sky / and/ earth/ the/ these/ they were first made/ the (past)/ that/ then/ I was born’” (pp. 1-2). Actually many other beings were in existence before the birth...