"Art and Ethnography in "Hanta Yo

The publication of an ambitious narrative dealing with the Dakotah Indians raises the hopes of all who are interested in Native American studies that at last we will have a book which presents the Plains Indian to the larger reading public as he really is, dispelling the misconceptions and breaking the stereotypes that have dogged him throughout our literary tradition, and which, at the same time, is worthy of a place among the major achievements of that tradition. Unfortunately, despite the publisher's publicity blitz, Ruth Beebe Hill's recently published Hanta Yo: An American Saga will disappoint those hopes. It is a troubling book when considered as a work of literature and troubling also when considered as a story projected within the framework of Dakotah philosophy, as Hill calls it (p. 14).1 As literature, Author Hill considers Hanta Yo not really a and not a documentary either. The names and the deeds of the four heroes are fictitious, but their tribe existed and 'everything really happened.' She calls it documented fiction (Thompson, p. 114). But the claim that everything really happened is belied by the fact that the characters and their deeds are fictitious; even to make the claim at all indicates a confusion and an unsoundness in the author's perception of her work. We should not be misled by the publisher's empty blurb: More than fact, more than fiction, Hanta Yo has the authority of a detailed ethnographic study and the adventure and excitement of a novel (jacket). This implies that the book is somehow better than either a mere or a mere ethnographic study. But it isn't, and the reasons that it isn't provide matter for serious reflection for both those interested in literature and those interested in Native Americans

Ethnography · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology