My People the Sioux

First published in 1928, 'My People the Sioux' is among the first books about Native Americans by Luther Standing Bear, a Sicangu and Oglala Lakota author, educator, philosopher, and actor. He worked to preserve Lakota culture and sovereignty and was at the forefront of a Progressive movement to change government policy toward Native Americans. It remains a milestone in Indian literature, written from the Indian point of view by an Indian. Standing Bear was born in the 1860s, the son of a Lakota chief, was in the first class at Carlisle Indian School, witnessed the Ghost Dance uprising from the Pine Ridge Reservation, toured Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and devoted his later years to the Indian rights movement of the 1920s and 1930s.