2011 Festival of Books in Deadwood features authors Diane Glancy, Delphine Red Shirt and Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, among others.
DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA -- As the proverbial dust settles from the 2011 South Dakota Festival of Books, the offerings of the authors addressing the event’s thematic focus this year on American Indian cultures remain to unsettle – and tempt – readers. Featured as the keynote speaker was Joseph Marshall III, who wrote the 2011 South Dakota One-Book award winner The Journey of Crazy Horse, which is the history of Tasunke Witko based on the storytelling Marshall heard growing up in the Lakota tradition on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Noting that many other people’s views of the 19th Century warrior differ from those of the Lakota, Marshall says, “We don’t focus on the warrior persona that seems to appeal to other cultures, the fighting man or the conqueror of Custer. There are other aspects of him that we perceive to be just as important.” Among the aspects was his humble, quiet and caring demeanor, the book reveals. “It points out the fact that he was very human,” Marshall says. “He wasn’t this lofty guy that could suck it up and handle anything.” A panel of six Native American women authors addressed the topic of “Native Voice: A Female Perspective.” It exposed the importance female authors place on the words of their grandmothers, or “the ones who preside over the sacred kitchen table,” as Standing Rock Dakota Sioux panelist Susan Power phrased it. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Power received the PEN-Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction for her 1995 novel Grass Dancer. On the panel with her were Native Sun News columnist Delphine Red Shirt, who is a Native American Studies Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona; longtime author and Rosebud Sioux tribal member Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, whose new book My Christmas Coat reflects reservation holiday experiences; Rosebud native performing artist Larissa Fasthorse; Kansas storyteller and filmmaker Diane Glancy, whose most recent nonfiction The Dream of a Broken Field was published by the University of Nebraska Press; and international award-winning poet Allison Hedge Coke, who punctuated the end of her presentation with an activist slogan: “Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline”. The panel presentation augmented individual authors’ separate book-signing presentations at the event sponsored by the South Dakota Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the city of Deadwood. Numerous other Native American authors and non-Indian authors with experience in topics related to American Indian culture filled out the five day festival program Oct. 5 -9. Among scheduled indigenous writers who also have taken part in previous rounds of the 8-year-old festival were Native Sun News columnist Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Pine Ridge sun dancer Ernie La Pointe and Oglala artist Don Montileaux. Many more American Indian literary figures have yet to be invited. The Humanities Council has created an American Indian Cultures Task Force with an eye toward preparing continued support of discussion on the topic at the next Festival of Books, set for Sept. 28-30, 2012. Writers interested in participating in the One Book South Dakota competition can apply at www.sdhumanities.org/programs_book.htm. Since 2003, the One Book South Dakota program has encouraged everyone across South Dakota to read and discuss the same novel or memoir throughout the course of a year. Community and book groups receive books on loan and can invite a scholar from the South Dakota Humanities Council speakers’ bureau to facilitate discussion. One Book South Dakota provides events that relate to the winning books. The program encourages comprehensive discussion of the texts as they relate to everyday life. For example, Marshall’s talk at the Festival of Books was hosted with a feed and sing. It was set at the newly established Deadwood Mountain Grand as part of “A Tribute to History and Tribal Writing” sponsored by the Brass Family Foundation, dedicated to educational and religious related activities. (Talli Nauman is the Health and Environment Editor for Native Sun News and contact her at H talli.nauman@gmail.com)
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