When Dream Bear Sings: Native Literatures of the Southern Plains

Abstract

When Dream Bear Sings edited by Gus Palmer, Jr. is an ambitious volume that brings together the tribal stories, myths, folktales, and personal sketches and poems from multiple scholars and artists. The volume is organized by seven language families and a language isolate. Within these sections are individual works for each language family: one in Athabaskan, one in Kiowa-Tanoan, one in a language isolate (Tonkawa), two in Uto-Aztecan, four in Iroquoian, seven in Caddoan, nine in Siouan, and eleven in Algonquian. Some of the works have been previously published and are newly translated, and some stories are published for the first time. The introduction to the text comments on the cultural landscape of the Southern Great Plains, discussing the people that lived there before and after removal efforts. This edited volume includes works from both of these groups. The introduction also notes the importance of language survival and the noble efforts presented here to retain the original orthography. Much of the introduction discusses the controversies of translations, including the way that stories change when they are transcribed into another language. Additionally, oral narratives are indelibly changedwhen they are written in any language. Cultural context is also important when reading and interpreting the stories included in the book. Palmer notes that native knowledge has increased over the years with Pan-Indianmovements and language preservation programs. An ever-present challenge is accurately translating a work into another language and attempting to convey its meaning by getting to the “heart of things”. The Algonquian language family contains six different groups, Cheyenne with six stories and the other five (Absentee Shawnee, Kickapoo, Lenape, Miami, and Potawatomi) each with a single story. The Cheyenne section of the text begins with a Gordon Yellowman’s explanation of storytelling traditions and the appropriate time of day and season for each type of tale. “The Bear and the Coyote” is documented in Cheyenne and then translated into English by Joyce Twins. The other four stories were told by Birdie Burns of the Cheyenne tribe and discuss ancient lifeways of the Cheyenne. The Absentee Shawnee chapter written by the editor includes a brief background on the language and a pronunciation guide. The short poems in this section were written by Pauline Wahpepah, a native speaker and teacher, and are entitled Eagle, Bear, Sun, and Flower. The selection for the Kickapoo language byMosiah Bluecloud is from a story discovered in the basement of the Kickapoo Secondary Administration Building in McCloud, Oklahoma. The tale is about motorcyclists harassing an Indian man at a diner and the man gets his revenge. The Lenape section contains background on the language as well as a map on the tribe’s removal. The story about the origin of the woman dance is recorded in Lenape and English. An interesting addition in this chapter is a link that directs readers to the original recordings of Lenape stories. David Costa provides a detailed background on the Miami language and the narrator (Kiišikohkwa, or Elizabeth Valley). The Miami section concludes with the “Story of Fox and Wolf”. The Potawatomi selection introduced and transcribed by Justin Neely tells of the origin of spring. plains anthropologist, Vol. 66 No. 258, May 2021, 172–174