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Interpreting the Legacy: John Neihardt and "Black Elk Speaks." By Brian Holloway. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003. xiv + 220 pp. Photographs, line drawings, tables, annotated bibliography, index. $27.95.
This volume represents a feisty defense of John Neihardt's literary role in crafting the classic presentation of the voice of a Lakota "holy man" in Black Elk Speaks. Holloway explicitly addresses a variety of criticisms leveled against Neihardt that in one way or another accuse him of supplanting Black Elk's voice with one resonating with the biases of his own cultural and religious vision. Holloway not only provides intelligent critiques of these charges, but also takes the reader directly to the texts behind the published text, supplying a great many photocopied pages from Enid Neihardt's typed transcriptions of her stenographic notes recording Black Elk's 1931 narration to Neihardt and...