Vine Deloria, Jr. Critical Essay | Critical Review by James Biser Whisker

SOURCE: A review of A Sender of Words: Essays in Memory of John G. Neihardt, in Reprint Bulletin, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, 1989, p. 16.

In the following review, Whisker asserts that the essays in A Sender of Words are in honor of John G. Neihardt and his importance to Amerindian studies, rather than a critique of his work.

The title of the work comes from a letter of 1931 from a visionary Sioux Indian named Black Elk to the subject of these essays, John G. Neihardt. Black Elk was the subject of Neihardt's most significant work, Black Elk Speaks. Few, if any, Americans better understood the Americans culture, at least as its remnants existed into the first half of the 20th century. This collection of essays on the contribution, thought and meaning of Neihardt appears just after the one hundredth anniversary of Neihardt's birth.

The contributors are a veritable...
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