Memory and vision : arts, cultures and lives of Plains Indian peoples

The story of the Native peoples of the Great Plains is a cornerstone in the history and heritage of the American West.

From the Arapaho to the Cheyenne, Lakota, Shoshone, Blackfeet, Comanche, Pawnee, Arikara, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, and Crow tribes, these buffalo hunters and pastoral farmers once dominated the vast landscape from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from present-day Canada to Texas.

In "Memory and Vision", Emma I. Hansen and distinguished members of the Plains Indian community weave the history of Native peoples together with an insightful view of contemporary Native life, presenting the glory, endurance, and renewal of the life ways of Plains peoples. "Memory and Vision" introduces the fundamental traditions of these tribal cultures, with detailed historical descriptions of daily life - spiritual, cultural, and economic - among the Plains tribes.

Native farmers and hunters put the earth's resources to creative use, with women playing an important role in growing crops, preparing food, and making clothing and shelter for their families. Of crucial importance to both nomadic and farming tribes was the buffalo, whose presence on the Plains has long been a tangible reminder of the tribes' ties to the land and of their heritage as hunters.

The contributors trace the story of the Plains peoples through adversity - European settlement, disease, warfare, loss of homelands, the decimation of the buffalo, the powerful influence of missionaries and government agents, and, finally, settlement on reservations - to the renewal of their cultures in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

On reservations and in cities and small towns throughout North America, Native life is experiencing a renewed sense of vigour, reflected in culture and language programs, the establishment of museums, the protection of sacred lands, and a renaissance in Native art to engage historical and contemporary issues.

Memory and Vision illustrates the past and present of the Plains peoples in over 250 full-colour images, from traditional feather bonnets, war shirts, bear claw necklaces, pipe tomahawks, beadwork, and quillwork, to contemporary paintings, and sculptures.