DELORIA, Ella Cara

Born Anpetu Waśte (Dakota name), 31 January 1889, at WhiteSwan on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, South Dakota; died 12 February 1971, Vermillion, South Dakota

Daughter of Philip and Mary Sulley Bordeaux Deloria

Anpetu Waśte (which means Beautiful Day) was Ella Cara Deloria's Dakota name. Her father was a deacon in the Episcopal church and Deloria was greatly influenced by the church as well as by her Sioux heritage. Dakota was the primary language spoken in her home, and Sioux culture was practiced there alongside Christianity. Deloria grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation, and graduated from the All Saints boarding school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Following her graduation in 1910, she attended Oberlin College in Ohio, and then transferred in 1913 to Columbia Teachers College, receiving a B.S. in 1915.

About 1927 Deloria began a long collaboration with Franz Boas, the distinguished anthropologist, with whom she had worked and studied while at Teachers College. She produced for him an immense body of research notes on Plains Indian language and culture. Speaking of Indians (1944) is Deloria's analytical description of Sioux culture. Waterlily (1988), first published 17 years after her death, is based on her ethnographic work, but written in the form of a novel in order to convey the details of her culture to a wide range of readers. Those who wish to know more about Native American women, as well as about Sioux culture, change, and more important continuity, will find the novel richly rewarding.

Deloria was bilingual as well as bicultural. Her work reveals the value of an insider's perspective, providing a bridge of understanding about Sioux society for those outside her tradition, as witnessed through the eyes of a Sioux woman. The paucity of books written by Native American women also makes her work an important contribution to Native American studies as well as to American literature. The major part of Deloria's work is focused on the period just prior to white settlement on the western plains of North America in the mid-19th century. Much of it challenges the still commonly held stereotypes of Native American peoples and especially the images of Indian women.

Deloria's Waterlily offers answers to questions about the role of women by providing a platform on which they speak for themselves. Deloria also provides perspectives on tribal history as well as the social and religious ideas centered on the obligations of reciprocity to one's kin that are evident in Sioux tradition to the present day. Unlike her extensive ethnographic and linguistic work, Waterlily explores a series of important concepts in an intriguing fictional narrative. Engaging anecdotes alternate with serious commentary on issues that arise while contemplating life in the mid-19th century Teton (Tiyospaye) extended family camp circle. Enriched with her own experiences and views, and the insights of a writer who combines previous research on her own culture with the skills of the trained insider, the author creates excellent fiction. No one was better qualified than Deloria to draw a series of Sioux female characters such as the ones central to this novel.

Against the exaggerated representation of the Sioux Nation as fabricated by contemporary media imagemakers, Deloria's work stands firmly and honestly, portraying Sioux tradition and especially Sioux women in the visibly important roles they held and continue to hold within their culture.