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jennybeastie's review
5.0
I really appreciate these short biographies of important Indigenous leaders. They pack a lot into a small package, and this one in particular is great at presenting Ella Cara Deloria through the lens of her Dakota background. The storytelling emphasizes the cultural importance of relationships and that theme is echoed throughout. It also plainly illustrates the additional strain that poverty puts on any kind of preservation work -- the moment when Deloria's research, and thus an entire language, was lost due to a late storage fee is just heartbreaking. And it vividly illustrates the critical importance of having representatives from a culture advocate for it against the mainstream -- while I'm sure the Dakota way of life means many things to the individuals who are part of it, an outsider will never have the insight to represent it the way someone who grew up within it can.
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