Developing the discipline of American Indian Studies by tribal citizens bolstering tribal sovereignty & treaty rights
Author
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Dakota, Crow Creek)
Book Summary
Anti-Indianism in Modern America by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a collection of essays that expose and deconstruct recurring Native American stereotypes in art and politics.
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is an enrolled member of the Crow Creek Tribe. She retired as a professor of English and Native Studies in 1971 from Eastern Washington University. Cook-Lynn became Professor Emerita in 1990. Her academic career was devoted to the development of Native Studies as an academic discipline.
RESOURCES: PODCAST & DISCUSSION GUIDE
Journalist and musician Marnie Cook interviews her mother, American Indian Studies visionary, professor, scholar and writer, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Crow Creek). Discussion guide written by OLWS Board Member, Writer and Artist Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota).
Cook-Lynn has observed five generations of Dakota as they have navigated the effects of treaties, U.S. laws and policies on their lives as ikce wicaste, or common man. Ordinary tribal citizens like her grandparents, parents, peers, children and grandchildren are survivors of many injustices as the result of colonization. Her work bears witness to the racism and oppressive imperialism experienced by the original peoples of this continent who have inhabited their aboriginal territories for centuries. In particular, the Oyate or Nation was comprised of Dakota, Lakota or Nakota dialect speakers who are also called the Oceti Sakowin or Seven Council Fires. Powerful outsiders who quickly became the majority attempted to seize the land and resources of the Oyate through massacres, imprisonment, persecution and exile of the Dakota from their homeland. Cook-Lynn names the colonizing tactics of the United States anti-Indianism.