Cook-Lynn leaves behind a legacy of art and accomplishment

RAPID CITY—“Writing is an essential act of survival for contemporary American Indians,” Elizabeth Cook-Lynn once wrote. “The final responsibility of a writer like me … is to commit something to paper in the modern world which supports this inexhaustible legacy left by our ancestors.”

Cook-Lynn entered the spirit world on Wednesday, July 5, at the age of 92. Starting in 1977, with the publication of her first book, And Badger Said This, Cook-Lynn authored, co-authored, or edited at least 28 books, and one book of poetry, I Remember the Fallen Trees, 1998.

For many years, her weekly column appearing in the Native Sun News Today, addressed the pressing issues of Indian Country with insight and eloquence. Editors were impressed by her polished professionalism, as she used just as many words as necessary to make her point, and then arranged those words in such a way it compelled the reader to keep reading.

It is difficult being an academic, an intellectual, and a woman, in a world where those things are not readily recognized or appreciated. Cook-Lynn excelled at making her work accessible to regular people and yet respected by her credentialed peers and colleagues.

Even those familiar with Cook-Lynn’s writing and history would have a hard time pinning down her exact perspective on many issues. She was a staunch advocate for tribal sovereignty, and yet delved deeply into mainstream politics. She was a professor welcome in all academic circles, and yet could rub elbows with radical activists.

Cook-Lynn was born on the Crow Creek Reservation in 1930. Both her father and grandfather served on the tribal council, and so she was no stranger to tribal issues, or tribal politics. Her grandmother was also a writer, and her great grandfather, the linguist Gabriel Renville, helped develop many early Dakota dictionaries.

While earning a BA in English and Journalism from South Dakota State University, she took a history class that ignored the Native presence and contribution in westward expansion. This prompted Cook-Lynn’s advocacy and she said she began to write “as an act that defies oppression.”

Cook-Lynn received her doctorate from the University of Nebraska in 1978. She then served as a visiting professor and a writer in residence at many universities. During her academic years she came to recognize and criticize those who had “tenuous claims” to Native ancestry, for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, and called these people “tribeless” because they had no genuine community connection to any tribe, and contended they damaged the economy and society of Native tribes. Some recognized tribes did not escape her criticism, as she considered those tribes who maintained cordiality with the federal government as “Vichy” tribes, after the Nazi-friendly Vichy government in occupied France during WWII. Cook-Lynn understood tribal sovereignty was essential to protect tradition, identity, and tribal interest.

Awards Cook-Lynn received were the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the native Writer’s Circle of America; a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship; the 2002 Literary Contribution Award from the Mountain Plains Library Association; and the Oyate Igluwitaya by the Native American Club at South Dakota State University.

One author that Cook-Lynn worked with was the noted Oglala Lakota attorney, Mario Gonzalez.

They collaborated on a book, The Politics of Hallowed Ground, in 1998, a book considered an essential read for anyone wishing to understand the struggle for tribal sovereignty and the efforts of the Wounded Knee Survivor’s Association to secure from the U.S. government a formal apology and recognition of the massacre site as a National American Monument. Little of what is contained in the book is presently taught in Indian studies classes at the high school or college level, and the book could serve as a primer, to give students and interested academics an insight into the traditional perspective of Cook-Lynn, and the Indian Law perspective of Gonzalez.

Gonzalez describes his collaboration with Cook-Lynn: “After the Black Hills Case was filed, I became known to her, and I got invited to her house to have tea and sit around and talk about issues. I was keeping a daily log of all the efforts I was doing on the Wounded Knee Survivors, a little bit on the Black Hills, and she said, let’s collaborate, let’s do a book together. She suggested that I would do my comments, and then she would do commentary on my comments, that’s kinda how that unique format came about in our book. I suggested that we footnote everything, because if we were going to be critical of people, we had better corroborate our comments with documentation. I think the book is going to be a future historical source of that little period of time from 1988-1991.”

Beyond the collaboration, Gonzalez wanted to point out that Cook-Lynn “did a great job of raising a family, her three daughters. Sometimes we overlook that part of her legacy. The books she wrote, some of them were novels, many of them were very intellectual. She was a perfectionist…very good, high-quality writing.”

Gay Kingman was also friends with Cook-Lynn: “I first met her when she was a professor out in the Northwest. We gravitated toward one another because we she was a Dakota and I was a Lakota. She had an outstanding history in education. The main thing I worked with in her later years was (the Sculpture Garden).”

In November 2017, a First Nations Sculpture Garden was dedicated at Rapid City’s Halley Park, featuring the busts of four noted Dakota and Lakota: Charles Eastman, Nicholas Black Elk, Oscar Howe, and Vine Deloria, Jr.

Marilyn Wounded Head sculpted the busts but the idea came from Cook-Lynn. She pursued it, got city approval, fought against a city council continually trying to sandbag the project, but after four years the idea became a reality. Criticism came that there were no busts of women, but what women would that have been? Women like Cook-Lynn herself, and modesty forbade she should commission her own bust. As Gonzalez said, “I think the three most noted people to come from the Crow Creek Reservation were Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Oscar Howe and Terry Ree.” Perhaps someday, her bust will be included in the sculpture garden she envisioned and spearheaded into existence.

“Elizabeth is a force,” Kingman said, “She sets her mind to something..,of course, she’s extremely articulate, and brilliant, and she gets things accomplished. I value my time I was able to work with her and team up with her, and as a friend, I think she was the model of Lakota womanhood.”

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

 

 

The post Cook-Lynn leaves behind a legacy of art and accomplishment first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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