Further Reading

There is no one comprehensive introduction to the history and sociocultural life of the Siouan First Nations in Canada. An historical overview of the settlement of the seven Dakota First Nations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, focused on economic strategies, is presented by Peter Douglas Elias in The Dakota of the Canadian Northwest: Lessons for Survival (Winnipeg, 1987). A valuable account of the culture of the Stoneys of Alberta and the history of their relations with the Canadian government is provided by Chief John Snow in These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places: The Story of the Stoney Indians (Toronto, 1977). James H. Howard’s The Canadian Sioux (Lincoln, Nebr., 1984) contains useful information relating to the period before 1972, but, as a source of narrative history, it is weakened by the lack of chronological framework and commentary on the accounts given by some of his Dakota consultants.

Alice Kehoe has published a short monograph, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization (New York, 1989), which provides a good account of the Ghost Dance religion in Saskatchewan and does much to link the recent histories of the Canadian and United States Dakota in the domains of values and cultural revitalization. Kehoe has also published an overview article on the Saskatchewan Dakota in The Modern Sioux: Social Systems and Reservation Culture (Lincoln, Nebr., 1970), edited by Ethel Nurge. A standard source on traditional and modern religion is Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation (Norman, Okla., 1987), edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks. The articles in this book encompass far more than religion in the strict sense of the term: they address medicine and healing, psychosocial adjustment, and the meaning of cultural symbols, within a perspective that includes both Canadian and American Dakota.