Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend (English and Indic Edition)

The proof is in the pudding. When it's bedtime, and it's time to choose books to read, my three-year-old daughter has picked this book out from among dozens of other books and asked me to read it to her several times. I feel confident she would give it 5 stars. As for me, I love the Donald Montileaux illustrations.

Memorable

Beautiful book. Thx.

beautifill story

One of the things I look for when reading a traditional story rooted in a Native Nation is an attribution of where the story was heard, and from whom. In Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend, Montileaux gives us that information right away in a two-page introduction.Montileaux heard this story from Alex White Plume, a Lakota elder and storyteller. In a radio interview, Montileaux says more about the story, assuring readers that he is retelling the story as it is told. Initially, White Plume was reluctant to have a traditional story put into print. When he saw what Montileaux had done, he gave him his blessing. In the radio interview, Montileaux also says that Agnes Gay, the woman who did the Lakota translation, works as an archivist at the Oglala Lakota College. She, too, verified the integrity of Montileaux's telling of that story.The care Montileaux took with the story marks the story itself as distinctive. His art adds a beautiful dimension to the words on the page. Montileaux's style reflects the ledger art of the 1800s, developed by Plains Indians who drew on ledger pages using pencil, ink, and watercolor.A third quality of the book that marks it as distinctive is that it is a bilingual text. Above, I noted that Agnes Gay did the translation. Throughout the book, readers can see/read the story in Lakota.The story itself is about how the Lakota people came to have horses... not in recent times, but long ago. A very long time ago. A young Lakota man sees them and spends time away from his village, taming and training them. He brings them to the village, where nobody has seen them before. They learn to use them to make life easier, but they also use them in aggressive actions on other tribes. That is an abuse of them as a gift of the Creator, so they are taken away. Of course, we know they come back... much later, when Europeans arrive.Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend is a fascinating story that pays tribute to the stories Native peoples have told for hundreds of years. I highly recommend it.Montileaux is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend is published by the South Dakota State Historical Society. Support small bookstores by getting a copy from Birchbark Books.

I love the bilingual text. My grandfather grew up in the time of the Indian Schools and wasn't allowed to speak his birth mother's language for fear that he'd be taken away. I only learned a handful of words that he knew so I appreciate seeing the story in both languages (I would also enjoy an audio version, told in both languages, so I could hear my great-grandmother's tongue).The drawings are beautifully rendered and the moral of the story is one that many children -regardless of heritage- need to learn. This story serves as a reminder that humans do impact the environment.

A beautifully illustrated and well written traditional story.