From the River's Edge - Softcover

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937141128 ISBN 13: 9781937141127

Publisher: Living Justice Press, 2012

Synopsis

Seeing the Missouri River country of the Sioux is like seeing where the earth first recognized humanity.... Yet the white man s humanity is forcing wrenching change upon the land: the time is the late sixties, and the Missouri River Power Project, just completed, is unleashing water on the lands that have nourished the Sioux, physically and spiritually, for countless generations. It is a new world, and this is called progress.

John Tatekeya, a Dakotah and a cattleman, has one of the best herds on the reservation. A man in his early sixties, he has prudently nurtured his herd through the years, till it numbers 107 horned Herefords. Now, however, his land is partly under water. Doubtless he could survive that, but one night, forty-two head of his cattle are stolen. John finds himself in the white man s court of law. He wants fairness and justice. And he wants his cattle back. To him they are the same thing. Or are they? The endless round of white man s rhetoric that ensues angers John, leaving him with a sense of betrayal and failure. The colorful voices of Old Benno and Gray Plume, fictional repositories of culture and history, mingle with those of Smutty Bear and Struck-by-the-Ree, historical signatories to Sioux treaties who say, I must become an American.... I will not beg for my life.

John searches for a way to reconcile the unavenged thefts of culture and honor, land and religion the legacies of his people with the seemingly contradictory ways of the white man. Increasingly alone, John Tatekeya nonetheless resists the temptation to fall into the pit of cynicism and despair, defeat and sorrow. As his search leads him forever from the bed of his young lover, Aurelia, he discovers with renewed clarity what it means to be a Dakotah.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe, was born 17 November 1930 in Fort Thompson, South Dakota, and raised on the reservation. She is Professor Emerita of English and Native American Studies at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. She comes from a family of Dakota politicians her father and grandfather served on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Council for many years and from Native scholars. Her grandmother was a bilingual writer for early Christian-oriented newspapers at Sisseton, South Dakota, and a great-grandfather, Gabriel Renville, was a Native linguist instrumental in developing early Dacotah language dictionaries. A professor of many years, Elizabeth is considered an authority in the development of the discipline of Native Studies.

Elizabeth did her undergraduate work at South Dakota State College (now South Dakota State University) in English and Journalism, graduating with a B.A. in English and journalism in 1952. She studied at New Mexico State University in 1966 and at Black Hills State College in 1968. She obtained her Masters of Education from the University of South Dakota in Education, Psychology, and Counseling in 1971. She was in a doctoral program at the University of Nebraska in 1977 78 and was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Stanford University in 1976.

Elizabeth has taught high school in New Mexico and South Dakota. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Davis and at Arizona State University at Tempe, Arizona. She spent most of her academic career at Eastern Washington University in Cheney from 1971 until her retirement, where she was Professor of English and Native American Studies. She became Professor Emerita in 1990. With Beatrice Medicine, Roger Buffalohead, and William Willard, she was one of the founding editors of Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies (Red Pencil Review). She is also a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and the Authors Guild.

Since her retirement, Elizabeth has served as a writer-in-residence at universities around the country. In the fall of 1993, she and N. Scott Momaday held a workshop at South Dakota State University for Lakota/Dakota/Nakota writers. From this workshop came a journal, Woyake Kinikiya: A Tribal Model Literary Journal, introduced by six of Elizabeth's poems. The Oak Lake Writers Society was also formed from this beginning. Elizabeth has been one of the committed mentors for the Society ever since.

For her own writing, she believes that Writing is an essential act of survival for contemporary American Indians. Her writing and teaching centers on the cultural, historical, and political survival of Indian Nations. She also says, The final responsibility of a writer like me ... is to commit something to paper in the modern world which supports this inexhaustible legacy left by our ancestors. In addition to her books and her contributions to anthologies, her work has been published in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Sun Tracks, Pembroke, Greenfield Review, Ethnic Studies Review, American Indian Quarterly, CCCC, and Wicazo Sa Review.

Edition details

• Publisher: Living Justice Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1937141128
• ISBN 13: 9781937141127
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 141