Aurelia: A Crow Creek Trilogy

by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

The first novella in this collection, "From the River's Edge" is the story of John Tatekeya's efforts to obtain reparation in a white man's court for forty-five head of stolen cattle. Even as Tatekeya's trial is proceeding, his people are suffering from the flooding of the Missouri River, an event precipitated by the construction of new hydropower dams upriver from the Crow Creek Reservation.In "Circle of Dancers", Cook-Lynn follows Aurelia Blue, John Tatekeya's lover of nearly ten years. She is pregnant and must decide about both the baby and the father, Jason Big Pipe, even as she struggles with her own identity as a Dakota Sioux woman. As the story progresses, she and Jason fight for survival in the face of the further political and economic consequences of the destruction of the Mni Sosa, one of the greatest environmental disasters to strike the Northern Plains. In the final volume, "In the Presence of River Gods", Aurelia, now the mother of two, leaves Jason and moves with her dying grandmother to Eagle Butte on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, two hundred miles away from Crow Creek.

Genres: Literature

462 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (born 1930 in Fort Thompson, South Dakota) is a Crow Creek Lakota editor, essayist, poet, novelist, and academic, whose trenchant views on Native American politics, particularly tribal sovereignty, have caused controversy.

Cook-Lynn co-founded Wíčazo Ša Review ("Red Pencil"), an academic journal devoted to the development of Native American studies as an academic discipline. She retired from her long academic career at Eastern Washington University in 1993, returning to her home in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has held several visiting professorships since retirement. In 2009, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Eliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I only read the last part of the trilogy “In the Presence of River Gods.” I like how Cook-Lynn writes, she develops character and stories so well. And the way she criticizes how the government has oppressed Native Americans is so powerful and makes you have an emotional reaction.