Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

472 Chapter 17
identity as a Kiowa from his grandmother and from other elders with whom
he consulted.
Yet another genre of native ethnography comprises the ‘‘as told to’’ autobiographies.
One famous example is Black Elk Speaks. John Neihardt, an epic
poet from Nebraska, met Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux, in 1930. A year later,
Neihardt and his daughters went to Black Elk’s home on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Black Elk spoke in Sioux and his words were translated by his son
Ben, who had studied at Carlisle University.
Neihardt says that it was his own function ‘‘to translate the old man’s story,
not only in the factual sense—for it was not the facts that mattered most—but
rather to recreate in English the mood and manner of the old man’s narrative’’
(Neihardt 1972 [1932]:xii).
Other examples of this genre for North American Indians include the astold-to
autobiography of Don Talayesva, a Hopi (Simmons 1942); of John
Lame Deer, a Miniconjou Sioux (Lame Deer and Erdoes 1972); of Two Leggings,
a Crow (Nabokov 1967); and of Left Handed, a Navajo (Dyk 1938; Dyk
and Dyk 1980). Here is Ruth Dyk, telling us how the story of Left Handed
was actually recorded. ‘‘Since Left Handed did not know English he told his
story in Navajo, and it was translated bit by bit by Philip Davis, a Navajo. Left
Handed would speak a minute or two, Philip would translate, and my husband
would write down the translation’’ (Dyk and Dyk 1980:xvii).
Roger Keesing recorded the life story of ’Elota, a Big Man of the Kwaio in
the Solomon Islands (Keesing 1978). The 15 recording sessions took place
over a period of 4 months. Keesing translated the tapes and provides a sketch
of Kwaio culture and history. Andrew Strathern recorded and translated the
life history of Ongka, a Big Man of the Kawelka in Papua New Guinea
(Strathern 1979). At first, Strathern prompted Ongka, but he soon left the Big
Man alone with the tape recorder. ‘‘I would return to the room from time to
time to change the cassette over,’’ reports Strathern, ‘‘and would find him fully
engrossed, gesturing and smiling into the microphone’’ (ibid.:x).
During two field trips to Botswana in 1971 and 1975, Marjorie Shostak collected
30 hours of taped interviews with Nisa, a !Kung woman. Nisa was
about 50 in 1971—an advanced age for a !Kung woman at that time. She
spoke only in !Kung, and Shostak’s English translation ran to hundreds of
typewritten pages (Shostak 1981:42–43). Shostak edited the tapes—in some
cases bringing parts of stories together to create continuous chronological narrative—to
produce Nisa’s moving autobiography.
Mountain Wolf Woman was the sister of Crashing Thunder. Her autobiography
was recorded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1958, at the home of Nancy
Lurie. Over a period of 5 weeks, during which Mountain Wolf Woman lived
with the Luries, she told her story in Winnebago, and Lurie recorded it on