Geographical Areas of Specialization: North
America, with an emphasis on Plains Indians
Topical Interests: kinship
and social organization, ritual and belief systems, oral traditions,
and material culture
Current Courses: E319 American Indian Religions, H500 History of Antrhopological Thought 19th-20th Century
Profile:
My education in anthropology at the University of Chicago emphasized
two complementary perspectives: British social anthropology in the
tradition of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown as exemplified by Fred Eggan,
my dissertation advisor, and American cultural anthropology in the
model of the symbolic or interpretive anthropology developed by David
M. Schneider and Clifford Geertz. The geographical area of my studies
is North America, with an emphasis on Plains Indians; the topical
areas of my studies include kinship and social organization, ritual
and belief systems, oral traditions, and material culture; the methods
of my studies include ethnohistory, linguistic and textual analysis,
and symbolism.
I began my graduate studies with an investigation of Sioux Indian
kinship, a topic that has been central to my interests throughout
my career. Kinship led inevitably to the structures of social life
and the ideologies that support them, which in turn led to the study
of religion broadly--the fundamental concepts, beliefs, and traditions
that underlie the practice of everyday life. A symbolic approach
offers an effective means by which to understand the relationship
between social (behavioral) and cultural (ideological) patterns.
Because American Indian life has changed so dramatically during the
last two hundred years, bringing the Sioux from independent buffalo
hunters on the Great Plains to reservation-dwellers dependent on
federal and state economies, a historical approach is essential in
order to understand the changes in Sioux society and culture over
time. I use the ethnohistorical method, attempting to accomplish
in my study of the past--through the use of written documents--exactly
what anthropologists do in the field in the present.
Anthropological theories and methods are brought to bear on the
documentary sources (not only written ones, but photographs and objects
as well) in order to understand the lived realities of previous time
periods. This serves to reconstruct historical ethnographies of the
past as well as to provide the historical background essential to
the understanding of the present.
Since 1970 I have done fieldwork on reservations in the Dakotas,
Montana, and Saskatchewan, where Sioux and the closely related Assiniboine
peoples live. Much of my field study has been linguistic, recording
texts of historical traditions, myths, and tales. My field studies
are paralleled by archival, library, and museum studies to discover,
edit, and publish major sources on the Sioux and Assiniboine past.
Responding to needs expressed by Indian people themselves, I have
undertaken studies for legal cases in support of treaty rights. More
recently, in collaboration with Professor Douglas R. Parks, I have
become involved in projects to teach the Sioux and Assiniboine languages,
both on reservations and at IU.
My classes reflect the areas of my studies and frequently are focused
around my current work. I offer undergraduate classes on North American
Indians, as well as graduate seminars on ethnohistory, kinship, symbolic
anthropology, history of anthropology, and a variety of American
Indian topics. With Professor Parks, I teach Lakota language at both
the undergraduate and graduate levels. Through the American Indian
Studies Research Institute, graduate students and occasional undergraduates
with strong commitment to American Indian studies become directly
involved in my research projects, and those of other institute members.
Selected Publications:
| 1994 |
Ed. (with Alfonso Ortiz) North American
Indian Anthropology: Essays on Society and Culture .
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. |
| 1993 |
These Have No Ears: Narrative and the Ethnohistorical
Method. Ethnohistory 40, no. 4 : 515-38
. |
| 1992 |
(with Douglas R. Parks) 1492-1992: American
Indian Persistence and Resurgence. In Plains
Indian Native Literatures . boundary 2, vol.
19, no. 3, pp. 105-47. |
| 1987 |
Ed. (with Douglas R. Parks) Sioux Indian
Religion: Tradition and Innovation . Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press . |
| 1984 |
Ed. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's
Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt . Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press. |
| 1982 |
The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical
Account. Pacific Historical Review , 51,
no. 4 : 385-405 . |
| 1980 |
(new ed. 1991) Ed. (with Elaine Jahner) James
R. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual . Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press. |
