< I'm wondering if anyone could provide me with addresses or a way
< to find out what Sioux reservations may be in or near Montana.
According to the map insert in *The American Indian Today*, edited by Stuart
Levine and Nancy O. Lurie, Penguin Books Inc., 1970, the only Sioux
reservation in Montana is the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, which is shared
with Assiniboin. It also shows two Sioux reserves in southwestern Saskatchewan
and Sioux on the Fort Totten and Standing Rock Indian Reservations in North
Dakota. The map refers to the distribution of Native Americans in 1950. If
there is a newer map showing updated information, I don't know of it.
I am puzzled by your and some other members of this list being dissatisfied
with the information you find in books and material you find in libraries. It
must be recognized that very few Native Americans have written on their own
cultures, native language, and history. They have had to depend on white
anthropologists, linguists, and historians to record the information for them.
Perhaps the problem is not knowing which writers are the most authoritative.
In most cases, you have to determine this for yourself after much reading and
thinking over, critically, what you have learned.
One problem with asking contemporary Native Americans for information on
their culture and tribal history is that they have been so long removed from
the aboriginal past that most have forgotten details that writers even twenty
years ago recorded. I have found this to be true in my own research on
Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache culture history. My five Fort Sill Apache
informants in 1963 were among the last former Apache POWs released at Fort
Sill, Oklahoma in 1913. Only one is still living. During visits to the Fort
Sill Apache tribe in Oklahoma and the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico
since 1986, I have been quizzed at length about details of the culture and
history that *all* have either forgotten, or never knew. Books, articles,
government documents, and archival materials may be the only way to find such
information. Read critically; not everyone was a trained observer, and some
who were made serious mistakes.
Grosvenor Pollard
via Elizabeth B. Pollard
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Elizabeth Pollard Bitnet: uahebp01@uahvax1
Systems Librarian Internet: uahebp01@asnuah.asn.net
University of Alabama in Huntsville Compuserve: 72457,1560
Huntsville, AL 35899 Phone: (205)895-6313
Fax: (205) 895-6862
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