"Halfway through the world premiere of the opera "The Trickster and the Troll" in Brookings last Sunday, it occurred to me that I was watching a Thanksgiving story more appropriate to the South Dakota experience than that feast in 1621 from which our national holiday supposedly originated.

Several sources, including Pilgrim Hall Museum and Scholastic.com, peg the first Thanksgiving as the celebration of a successful harvest in the autumn of 1621 by Pilgrims and members of the Wampanoag tribe. The sources, then, support what I learned as a kid back in first grade at Reliance, so they must be true.

Last Sunday's performance by the Heartland Opera Troupe, on the other hand, was based on a story written by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, a Lakota author born on the Rosebud reservation and married to a Norwegian man.

Driving Hawk Sneve drew upon that mixture of Lakota and Norwegian to create the tale of the "Trickster and the Troll." One of my granddaughters had a part as a duck. That's how I came to be in the audience for an opera about how people sometimes lose themselves when they try to function in a modern world by leaving behind their heritage and the stories passed down from generation to generation. Whether Lakota or Norwegian, such people can find themselves without the foundation of history and culture and with little understanding of their past."

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Terry Woster: Lakota author examines heritage in opera (The Sioux Falls Argus Leader 11/23)