This book presents two of the most important traditions of the
Dakota people, the Red Road and the Holy Dance, as told by Samuel
Mniyo and Robert Goodvoice, two Dakota men from the Wahpeton
Dakota Nation near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Their
accounts of these central spiritual traditions and other aspects of
Dakota life and history go back seven generations and help to
illuminate the worldview of the Dakota people for the younger
generation of Dakotas, also called the Santee Sioux. "The Good Red
Road," an important symbolic concept in the Holy Dance, means the
good way of living or the path of goodness. The Holy Dance (also
called the Medicine Dance) is a Dakota ceremony of earlier
generations. Although it is no longer practiced, it too was a
central part of the tradition and likely the most important
ceremonial organization of the Dakotas. While some people believe
that the Holy Dance is sacred and that the information regarding
its subjects should be allowed to die with the last believers,
Mniyo believed that these spiritual ceremonies played a key role in
maintaining connections with the spirit world and were important
aspects of shaping the identity of the Dakota people. In The
Red Road and Other Narratives of the Dakota Sioux, Daniel Beveridge
brings together Mniyo and Goodvoice's narratives and biographies,
as well as songs of the Holy Dance and the pictographic notebooks
of James Black (Jim Sapa), to make this volume indispensable for
scholars and members of the Dakota community.