Museographs The Sioux: Dakota, Lakota, Nakota

Caron Caswell Lazar

Description

Amid the armed conflict and broken treaty signings of nineteenth-century America, the highly successful horse culture of the plains, the Sioux Indians clutched to their way of life. Composed of three major groups and spread over six states, the Sioux represent a community divided. Much of their traditional world view and custom was overshadowed by the white man's quest for the dominance of Western civilization. Still, a highly developed sense of tribal pride coupled with a warrior spirit has safeguarded the Sioux against complete assimilation and cultural elimination.

Chronicle this Western tribe's enduring history with The Sioux. Understand the true scope of the white man's debilitating influence, which while leading initially to a richer vocabulary, a more practical economic system, and lasting contributions to traditional dress, was also later responsible for the horrific 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

Though such imposed change might have permanently crushed the spirit of a people, the Sioux have seen a cultural renaissance and thrive today on seven reservations throughout the United States and Canada. Traditional practice has resumed its place in such events as the modern Powwow and the Grass Dance. Costumes originating in the nineteenth-century reflect ethnic vitality and bear the graceful integration between tribal materials and European trader goods to the present. Most importantly, that warrior spirit remains replenished and unshaken, proving a valuable lesson in conquering adversity and in the self-assertion of both individual and collective identities of a people.

Sujets

• Native American
• Art

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 02 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456615734
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

MUSEOGRAPHS
The Sioux: Dakota, Lakota, Nakota
 
 
by
Carôn Caswell Lazar

Copyright 2013 Carôn Caswell Lazar,
All rights reserved.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1573-4
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
The Museographs monographs are publications of The Lazar Group, Incorporated
 
Museographs The Sioux: Dakota, Lakota, Nakota , Carôn Caswell Lazar
All rights reserved
No reproductions of this newsletter, or its attending materials, in whole or in part or in any form may be made without written authorization of the copyright owner.
 
Museographs Titles:
 
Japanese Satsuma Pottery
Contemporary African-American Folk Art
Shaker Design
Mexican Painting of the 19th & 20th Centuries
American Indians I: The Sioux
Appalachian Handicrafts
American Indians II: The Cherokee
The Art of Islam: A Survey
The Old City of Jerusalem
Illuminated Manuscripts
Mexican Folk Art
American Indians III: Kanien’kehaka
Art, Myth, Legend and Story
The Art of the Celts
The Sioux
Dakota, Lakota, Nakota
 

Sioux War Club
(Sioux Native American, North or South Dakota, c. 1880)
Length 24 inches
Stone, wood and beads
The Detroit Institute of Arts Founders Society Purchase
 
In the seasons ahead many, many whitemen will visit this tribe. Certain ones will hold the same good heart toward the Lakota that I and you hold toward one another. They shall see the good Lakota ways and honor the Lakota precept and custom. The Lakota will recognize these good persons for the reason that these good persons shall recognize the Lakota.
Tonweya, Oglala Sioux, circa 1830
 
Note: Recently the Board of Directors of the Smithsonian’s new museum dedicated to the culture of the first American’s voted to adopt the term American Indian, in place of Native American, as the correct identification of America’s indigenous peoples. Over half of the Directors on the Board of this institution are themselves American Indians. We have therefore changed our original text to coincide with this decision.
 
 
Historic Overview
 
Sioux is the name given to a large and very successful group of American Indian Plains people consisting of a confederation of several independent tribes and bands who by the nineteenth century inhabited an area which stretched from Minnesota across the Dakotas and into eastern Wyoming and Montana.
 
The name by which this group of people called themselves is the Dakota Nation. Within the Dakota there are three primary groups divided regionally. They are the Eastern or Santee Sioux (Dakota) who lived in the forests and prairies of Minnesota; the Middle Sioux (Nakota) made up of the Yankton to the south and the Yanktonai to the north, who lived between the Missouri and Red rivers of the eastern Dakotas; and the Western or Teton Sioux (Lakota) made up of the Oglala, Brule, Two Kettles, Minniconjou, Sans Arcs, Black Feet and Hunkpapa. These seven Lakota tribes were also known as the “Seven Fireplaces.”
 
In the later years of the nineteenth century, during the period of armed conflict with the U.S. government and the negotiation of treaties between 1851 (the year of the Fort Laramie Treaty) and 1881 (the surrender of Sitting Bull), individual bands from among these tribes chose either to move and settle near agencies established by the U.S. government to oversee their conversion to “civilization” or to move increasingly northwest to the valleys of the upper Missouri and its tributaries until the dwindling of the buffalo herds — slaughtered for their skins by the white man — forced the last starving holdouts onto reservations. Today the Sioux live on seven reservations and in many communities in Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Canada and elsewhere.
 
 
Before the White Man
 
The words: admit, assume, because, believe, could, doubt, end, expect, faith, forget, forgive, guilt, how, it, mercy, pest, promise, should, sorry, storm, them, us, waste, we, weed or their equivalents did not exist in the American Indian’s vocabulary before the white man brought them to the new world.
 
Another word that has no root in the primitive American Indian lexicon is “free.” By the time of Columbus the American Indian was the remnant of a people in its final stage. This old race had attained what was perhaps the highest functional concept of individualism ever practiced. The Sioux recognized man as the owner of the earth and nothing was more sacred than choice. In their original concept there was nothing for a man to be free from. He possessed a habitual spiritual consciousness. His spirit did not seek the truth but held on to the truth. What he needed to know, nature revealed to him. What he desired to know — the best way to achieve his maximum spiritual potential — was the only mystery he chose to investigate.
 
The Dakota did not approach this journey toward spiritual development as a mystic, he did not seek psychic powers — only his own spiritual development. His familiar-voice, his spirit, was the truth-bearer that told him always what to do, not what not to do. His reasoning mind chose to act or not to act. He was not an altruist; he was a trader of spiritual values which he demonstrated not by the greatness or smallness of his gift but rather to whom he gave and why.