Review of Ella Deloria Waterlily Feminist Perspective - Essay Example

Review of Ella Deloria's 'Waterlily' Feminist Perspective Ella Cara Deloria, during her lifetime, was a combination of several traits in one person.She was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist of the Yankton Sioux background. Her perspectives, expressed through her work, brought her to limelight, though most of her these were not fully comprehended during her lifetime. The publication of her novel, Waterlilly, after her death, shed some light on her work. An in-depth analysis of the novel 'Waterlilly' will not be appropriately carried out without a quick look at the biography of the writer. This, perhaps, will shed more light on her perspectives and create a better insight into her intentions with the novel 'Waterlilly'. Ella Cara Deloria is best known for her linguistic and ethnographic work on the Sioux Nation. Though not formally trained as anthropologist, since she was a trained as a teacher, she gained a reputation in the field. She brought a new perspective on her work, as she was born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation and part of a traditional Dakota Sioux family. Deloria was born in the White Swan district of the Yankton Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Her parents were Mary Sully Bordeau Deloria and Philip Deloria, the family having Yankton Sioux, Irish, and French roots. Her father was one of the first Sioux to be ordained as an Episcopalian priest. Although Ella was the first child to the couple, they each had two daughters by previous marriages; her parent had three more children after her. Deloria was brought up on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, at Wakpala, and was educated first at her father's mission school and All Saints Boarding School in Sioux Falls, and then a brief period at the University of Chicago at Oberlin College, Ohio, to which she had won a scholarship. After two years at Oberlinshe she moved to Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, and graduated with a B.Sc. in 1915. Throughout her professional life she suffered from not having had the money or the free time necessary to take an advanced degree, largely because of her commitment to the support of her family; her parents were elderly, and her sister suffered from brain tumors. In addition to her work in anthropology, Deloria had a number of jobs, including teaching dance and physical education, lecturing and giving demonstrations on Native American culture, working for the Camp Fire Girls and for the YWCA, and holding positions at the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota, and (as assistant director) the W.H. Deloria had a stroke in 1970 and died the following year of pneumonia. Her family spoke Dakota and Lakota dialects of the Sioux Language. It was through the understanding of the Dakota and Lakota dialects that Deloria would find her place in history. The Deloria family was devote Christians, but also followed the traditional ways of the Dakota people. Ella Deloria was dedicated to her family, which through extended kinship was great in numbers and this was one of the factors that hindered her professional education. Waterlilly was perhaps the highest of Deloria's achievement; it can be described as a book that guides the outsider into the mental as well as the historical world of the nineteenth century Sioux. Deloria was more focused on kinship, tribal structure, and the role of women in her traditional society and this greatly shaped her work. From a feminist perspective, Deloria's work appears to demonstrate the strength of the women in a traditional structure that is greatly misunderstood. In her efforts to research traditional culture and structure, Deloria conducted vast number of interviews with elders, women and tribal historians. She spent 1962-1966 working at the University of South Dakota, where she did her research, lectured, consulted and continued writing that she became an authority on the Dakota and Lakota Sioux. These, to a large extent, defined the content and perspective of her novel - Waterlilly. Through her extensive research work, the novel provides a rich understanding on traditional Dakota and Lakota culture. Deloria knew very much of culture than an average unmarried women should know, her writings on the culture rationally would be an expression of an insiders account of the culture and being a woman, her view was also bound to be inclined towards a feminist approach to traditional culture. Another factor that obviously defined Deloria's views was that she was quite traditional herself. It is reported that she declined several work opportunities due to her kinship and family obligations. She had to face several financial difficulties and could not afford her professional education because she had to carter for the family, especially after her mother's death. For Deloria, as in traditional culture, family comes before everything. Waterlilly, told from the woman's viewpoint, can be seen as emphasizing the network of obligations and relationships that formed cultural unity and the roles of the woman in such network. She was not just commenting upon the traditional roles and lives of women, by inter-weaving real stories based on facts of actual plains life, she created a vivid picture of the traditional Dakota people. Deloria felt that omitting the personal vitiated the life of the culture and reduced human emotion to statistical patterns. And with Waterlilly, she achieved what could be seen as a native-centered science monograph. One of the interesting stories that can illustrates Deloria's perspectives of the Dakota woman, as recorded in the novel is the Blue Bird's story. Blue Bird is traveling with a camp of Dakotas and is expecting a baby while on the journey. While on the path, Blue Bird feels it is time to have her baby and went off into the trees to have her baby. Seeing how beautiful her baby was, Blue Bird exclaimed, "How beautiful you are! As beautiful as the waterlilly. You are a waterlily, my waterlily." (p. 6). Blue Bird married a man known as Star Elk, who does not respect her grandmother very much. Star Elk, a lazy, jealous man was regarded as weak and sub-standard in Dakota male standards. He demonstrated this effectively when he "throws away his wife" (p. 16) at a victory dance whereas men were not supposed to publicly display emotion in Dakota tradition. After being publicly humiliated, Blue Bird, her grandmother and Waterlily luckily and happily ran into their family's tiyospaye. The reason why it was so fortunate is because Blue Birds parents and brothers were killed one day when Blue Bird was about fourteen. They were taken in and made to feel at home. Along with finding their family, Blue Bird also met her new husband, Rainbow. Rainbow was a good provider, hard worker and a widow who had a son. Little Chief. Together, Rainbow and Blue Bird had two more children. Apparently, Deloria's linguistic abilities and her intimate knowledge of traditional and Christianized Sioux culture, coupled with her deep commitment both to the culture of her people defined her views as expressed in Waterlilly, while her devotion to scholarship provided her the necessary wherewithal to carry out this important duty. As evident from the story related above, Waterlilly sought to express the strength and dominant, though often relegated, role of the woman in the traditional structure of her people. Waterlilly could be better seen as an insider's account of her culture, considering the fact that at the time of Deloria's work, she had to contend with much misinformation of her people; a great deal of which still continues till today, when much of the Dakota cultures was considered to be devil worship and was thus outlawed. Waterlilly could therefore be her attempt at correcting several of this prejudicial understanding of the Dakota culture, this is obvious from her several descriptions of life stories, events and ceremonies in the work. From her humble background, Deloria became an authority on the Dakota and Lakota Sioux, through her devotion to culture and her zeal to correct the misconceptions about her people and her culture held by the mainstream American culture. Though, due to the fact that she could not afford or find the time for an advanced degree and perhaps her attachment to her culture, she also faced the problem of not blending with well known researchers of her time. Despite all the odds, Deloria achieved her purpose with Waterlilly, which was not just to comment on the culture of her people, especially from a feminist view, but to make for a better understanding of the Dakota tradition and culture and also as a contribution to the study and knowledge of the strength, weakness, roles and norms of women in a traditional structure. Read More