The spirit and the sky : Lakota visions of the cosmos / Mark Hollabaugh.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The interest of nineteenth-century Lakotas in the Sun, the Moon, and the stars was an essential part of their never-ending quest to understand their world. The Spirit and the Sky presents a survey of the ethnoastronomy of the nineteenth-century Lakotas and relates Lakota astronomy to their cultural practices and beliefs. The center of Lakota belief is the incomprehensible, extraordinary, and sacred nature of the world in which they live. The earth beneath and the stars above constitute their holistic world.



Mark Hollabaugh offers a detailed analysis of aspects of Lakota culture that have a bearing on Lakota astronomy, including telling time, their names for the stars and constellations as they appeared from the Great Plains, and the phenomena of meteor showers, eclipses, and the aurora borealis. Hollabaugh's explanation of the cause of the aurora that occurred at the death of Black Elk in 1950 is a new contribution to ethnoastronomy.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book joins a host of publications that focus on and explore the archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy of Lakota cosmologies. These include studies of remarkable winter counts in the context of ritual and spiritual lives. Hollabaugh (emer., physics and astronomy, Normandale Community College, Minnesota) compromises, however, in an attempt to present a cohesive picture of Lakota sky knowledge. For example, to augment Lakota material, he draws upon astronomical beliefs of linguistic and cultural kindred, the Dakota. Other Lakota information is "based on second-hand" sources that may contain misinterpretations. Observations collected by traders, missionaries, and others were not necessarily understood by them, nor was Lakota epistemology appreciated. The author relies on many published works. Thus, this is a lightweight book that does not deepen serious students' engagement with the Lakota. Hollabaugh offers readers unfamiliar with the basics of astronomy a "crash course" (chapter 3), without which Lakota cultural views of the night sky might seem altogether unintelligible. Though his efforts are admirable, the attempt to teach basic astronomy and Lakota culture in one slim volume necessarily gives short shrift to both. Ceremonies involving the sun dance, sweat lodge, and sacred pipe that contain cosmological information are only briefly explored. Summing Up: Recommended. Public, general, and lower-level undergraduate collections only. --Llyn De Danaan, Evergreen State College