LAKOTA TALES AND TEXTS IN TRANSLATION has a remarkable history of its own. The original Lakota manuscript was rescued from destruction during the violent occupation of the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, during the late winter of 1973. In 1970, Paul Manhart, a Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus and at the time a pastor in that village, had published Eugene Buechel, S.J.'s monumental Lakota-English Dictionary, with the late Louis and Daisy Whirlwind Horse assisting. Louis had been a tribal interpreter and Daisy was a highly perceptive translator. Father Manhart had an office in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church overlooking the mass grave of Lakota visitor victims of the 1890 massacre. At the time of occupation, he had borrowed the original manuscript of Buechel's "Lakota Tales and Texts" from the Holy Rosary Mission archives. He was planning soon to publish it. So he kept it on a lower shelf in the far corner of his small library. Early during the occupation, he and two local men, Benjamin White Butterfly and Ruben Mesteth, took a box and went to the office, only to find it in shambles and the room and library shelves stripped of books - all except the Tales and Texts manuscript in the corner, a dingy home-made book in Lakota long-hand, untouched. All else was gone. In June of 1978 then, "Lakota Tales and Texts" was published in St. Louis. Father Manhart prepared this translation to answer many requests from teachers of history, social sciences, and language; and to lay a groundwork for preparing a series of Lakota language texts for systematically teaching the language in a two or four-year high school course. In Louis and Daisy Whirlwind Horse's words: "Our children will lose some real and conscious contact with their roots unless we continue to record and study Lakota."

Lakota Texts is a treasure trove of stories told in the original language by modern Lakota women who make their home in Denver, Colorado. Sometimes witty, often moving, and invariably engaging and fascinating, these stories are both autobiographical and cultural. The stories present personal experiences along with lessons the women have learned or were taught about Lakota history, culture, and legends. The women share aspects of their own lives, including such rituals as powwows, the sweatlodge, and rites of puberty. The women also include details of the older Lakota world and its customs, revered myths, more recent stories, and jokes. In addition to the valuable light Lakota Texts sheds on the lives of modern Lakota women, these stories also represent a significant contribution to American Indian linguistics. Regina Pustet has meticulously transcribed and translated the stories in a detailed, interlinear format that makes the texts a rich source of information about modern Lakota language itself.

Joseph M. Marshall’s thoughtful, illuminating account of how the spiritual beliefs of the Lakota people can help us all lead more meaningful, ethical lives. Rich with storytelling, history, and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and reveals the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Joseph Marshall is a member of the Sicunga Lakota Sioux and has dedicated his entire life to the wisdom he learned from his elders. Here he focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of life--bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion. Whether teaching a lesson on respect imparted by the mythical Deer Woman or the humility embodied by the legendary Lakota leader Crazy Horse, The Lakota Way offers a fresh outlook on spirituality and ethical living.

Lakota Texts is a treasure trove of stories told in the original language by modern Lakota women who make their home in Denver, Colorado. Sometimes witty, often moving, and invariably engaging and fascinating, these stories are both autobiographical and cultural. The stories present personal experiences along with lessons the women have learned or were taught about Lakota history, culture, and legends. The women share aspects of their own lives, including such rituals as powwows, the sweatlodge, and rites of puberty. The women also include details of the older Lakota world and its customs, revered myths, more recent stories, and jokes. In addition to the valuable light Lakota Texts sheds on the lives of modern Lakota women, these stories also represent a significant contribution to American Indian linguistics. Regina Pustet has meticulously transcribed and translated the stories in a detailed, interlinear format that makes the texts a rich source of information about modern Lakota language itself.

Oral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native American cosmology. Not only have they been - and continue to be - an essential part of handing down Native American customs, norms, beliefs, and cultural histories, but they also form a communal mythic discourse. This discourse is not a "fixed text," but rather a dynamic process of interactive relations that are developed over generations of experience, and passed from relation to relation and generation to generation. In this sense, the traditional structures of mythic discourse serve an integrative function: to form a coherent basis for communal identity in terms of a shared set of fundamental ideas and beliefs expressed in multiple forms. The oral traditions and myths recorded in this book are part of the communal mythic discourse of the Lakota Sioux people. Originally collected and recorded at the close of the nineteenth century by two Native language speakers - Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala Sa - these oral traditions provide some of the least distorted or colonially disrupted examples of the Lakota Sioux communal mythic discourse. Containing over 40 oral traditions, Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths brings together into a single volume these remarkable myths and legends. Edited and with a forward by Peter N. Jones, Ph.D., Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths is a welcome and refreshing addition to the literature. Once again the beauty, depth, and knowledge contained within the Lakota Sioux oral traditions can speak for themselves.