Aurelia: A Crow Creek Trilogy

by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

A collection of three novellas spanning several decades, Aurelia tells of the invasion of Indian lands, the destruction of a river--the Missouri, or Mni Sosa--in the twentieth century, the continued failure of the people of the Northern Plains (both Indian and white) to refute historical fraud, and the grief and joy of an American Indian family. The first novella in this collection, From the River's Edge (first published as a single volume by Arcade Publishing, 1991), is the story of John Tatekeya's (tah-tAY-kee-ya) 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. Aurelia has been witness to events from 1930 to 1990--including the birth of the American Indian Movement and the uprising at Wounded Knee in 1974--and, like the Corn Wife from Sioux mythology, she carries the history of the people with her into an uncertain future. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a critic, professor emerita, and member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe of Fort Thompson, SD. Her other books include "Then Badger Said This", "Seek The House of Relatives", "The Power of Horses And Other Stories", "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner And Other A Tribal Voice", And "The Politics of Hallowed Ground", "A Hundred Years of Struggle for Sovereignty" (with Mario Gonzalez). Her new collection of poetry, " I Remember The Fallen Trees", is available from Eastern Washington University.

Genres: Literature

462 pages, Hardcover

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.