Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives

by Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, Wahpetunwin Carolyn Schommer (Translator)

Situating Dakota language and oral tradition within the framework of decolonization, Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives makes a radical departure from other works in Indigenous history because it relies solely on Indigenous oral tradition for its primary sources and privileges Dakota language in the text.

 

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, both a historian and a member of the Dakota Nation, demonstrates the value of oral history in this bilingual presentation and skillful analysis of the stories told by the Dakota elder Eli Taylor (1908–99). Taylor lived on the Sioux Valley Reserve in Manitoba, Canada, and was adopted into Wilson’s family in 1988. He agreed to tell her his story and to share his accounts of the origins, history, and life ways of the Dakotas. In these pages he tells of Dakota history, the United States–Dakota Conflict of 1862, Dakota values, and the mysterious powers of the world. Wilson gracefully contextualizes and complements Taylor's stories with a careful analysis and distillation of the narratives. Additionally, she provides an overview of Dakota history and a substantial critique of the use of oral accounts by mainstream historians.

 

By placing Dakota oral tradition within the academic discipline of history, this powerful book illuminates the essential connections among Dakota language, history, and contemporary identity.

Genres: Indigenous, Nonfiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Waziyatawin is Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000 and earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. She also held the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at UVic. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities. She is a compelling speaker and is often invited to give talks and interviews, appearing on many radio and television programs.

Reviews

[Grub Street Hack]

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson provides readers with a stunning example of methods used to procure and communicate indigenous oral histories. In Remember This!, Wilson claims that her “task is to fashion a place for Indigenous historical scholarship that examines an Indigenous epistemology and utilizes Indigenous sources in an academic but Indigenous-centered framework” (22). She argues that “it is absolutely essential to consult Indigenous sources” when writing indigenous histories, and critiques historians for using none or only limited quantities of Native sources (23). She adds that “this dismissal of Indigenous perspectives is symptomatic of the relationship of the colonizer to the colonized” (24). She writes that Remember This! “may be situated in the growing body of global literature on Indigenous decolonization,” placing the work within a Pan-Indian framework (13). Raising the stakes, Wilson asserts that Native American histories based on oral traditions is so important that they “can stand on their own,” countering the idea that oral histories can be only used in a supplementary role (16).

The source for the oral histories found within Remember This! is a week-long interview with Wilson’s adopted grandfather, Eli Taylor. The book starts with several chapters introducing the methods used and advocated for, and provides a brief overview of Dakota culture and history. Remember This! continues with the oral accounts of Eli Taylor—in both Dakota and English—and ends with a brief conclusion. Wilson describes the recital of oral traditions as a skill that is honed through training, and the accuracy judged by elders during regular recitals. Additionally, she claims that by including Taylor’s narrative in the indigenous tongue, her book will act as “part of a larger decolonization project and as a means of conscious resistance” (66).

As part of her argument against standard Native American history, Wilson critiques prominent authors like Calvin Martin and Richard White. She claims that these authors have reinforced Native American stereotypes by describing indigenous stories as “mythic” and calling them “circular thinkers.” In the case of Martin, she claims that he has spurred damaging debates surrounding Native Americans and their relationship with the environment. She also counter’s Whites argument that historians of indigenous groups need not worry about learning an indigenous language because few documents are written in native tongues, few speakers remain, and that the historical language differs from contemporary language. Wilson responds by comparing this argument to European studies (imagine a French historian who doesn’t know French!) and by claiming that White is making it “legitimate to ignore the voices of Indigenous people if those voices are in Indigenous languages” (25).

Although a valuable work on oral traditions among indigenous groups, Remember This! can be improved. First, Wilson does not do much more than copy down oral histories, claiming that the stories will “stand on their own” (12). But is it not the job of a historian to interpret sources? For this reason, Remember This! might be better thought of as a sourcebook. Additionally, Wilson’s argument that oral histories can stand alone is not very convincing. Even Devon Mihesuah, her mentor, has stated that “using the Native voice exclusively may not yield a precise picture of past events,” and asserts that oral histories should be used congruently with other sources.

[Andy Pandy]

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson gets in the way of Eli Taylor's stories at times, but maybe that is just my perception. It is not for me to evaluate this work: the real importance of it is in putting the Dakota language into print, unique diacritics and all. Let the language live! Hopefully young Dakota people use this book as a resource, now and going forward.