"They Sang What They Lived": Reconstructions of Lakota Culture Through Songs

Abstract

In my dissertation, I analyze Lakota song texts to show how songs served as a cultural and historical records. Traditionally, Lakota culture was oral and information was transmitted in family circles in the form of stories, songs, art, and language and from generation-to-generation. Working with three song collections (Blunt Horn et al. 1908, Goings et al. 1939, and Yellow Face et al. 1909), I found a wide variety of songs, including love songs, ceremonial songs, personal songs, songs of societies, journey songs, songs of festivities, and dance songs. For purposes of analysis, I grouped the songs by the four virtues they express: bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. With regard to songs as cultural documents, I explore the notion that in oral culture, songs serve as records of collective memory about social, historical, ceremonial events, structures, orders as well as of values, feelings, and emotions that were part of social life. In their abstractness, Lakota songs resemble rock art. Songs, like Native art, record relationships between the elements of culture and people rather than create a descriptive picture. Semantic ambiguity, indexicality, and the abundance of shifters in the text allow for the re-creation of the context so that songs maintain their relevance in the ever-changing Lakota world.