Speaking of Indians

Beginning with a general discussion of American Indian origins, language families, and culture areas, Deloria then focuses on her own people, the Dakotas, and the intricate kinship system that governed all aspects of their life. She writes, “Exacting and unrelenting obedience to kinship demands made the Dakotas a most kind, unselfish people, always acutely aware of those about them and innately courteous.”

Deloria goes on to show the painful transition to reservations and how the holdover of the kinship system worked against Indians trying to follow white notions of progress and success. Her ideas about what both races must do to participate fully in American life are as cogent now as when they were first written.

• Dakota Texts
• Ella Deloria's the Buffalo People (English and Dakota Edition)
• Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society (New York Review Books Classics)
• Deer Women and Elk Men: The Lakota Narratives of Ella Deloria
• Waterlily
• Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
• Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
• Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"