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Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings (In'oska). Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997. 259 + xxviii pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $50.00.
Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings's collaborative effort, Blessing for a Long Time, will certainly have a lasting impact on the knowledge surrounding Omaha people, their sacred objects, and the two ethnographers most often associated with the Omaha-Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche. In a respectful and attentive style, Ridington (who wrote the text) chronicles the circumstances of the removal of Umon'hon'ti (also called the Sacred Pole) from the Omahas to the Peabody Museum in 1888, and its return in 1989. Drawing largely from the works of Fletcher and La Flesche, Ridington couches much of the book within an ethnohistorical framework, with chapters that include in-depth discussions of Omaha...