Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (born 1930) is an editor, essayist, poet, novelist, and academic, and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. She has been a formidable voice within the discipline of Native American Studies, Native Studies, and Indigenous Studies. She is considered to have a strong voice and views about Native American politics, particularly in regards to tribal sovereignty. For instance, she has often been quite vocal and critical of authors putting forth tenuous claims to Native/Indigenous ancestry in order to advance their own careers, and has reflected on the negative implications that these "tribeless" authors have not only on Native Studies as a discipline, but also in the development of economic and social life of Native nations.^[1] Cook-Lynn was born in Fort Thompson, South Dakota) on the Crow Creek Reservation. She is a Dakota and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.^[2] Cook-Lynn attended South Dakota State College where she earned a BA in English and Journalism. By 1971 she had married, had four children, divorced, and earned a Master of Educational Psychology and Counseling from the University of South Dakota.^[2]

Cook-Lynn co-founded Wíčazo Ša Review ("Red Pencil"), an academic journal devoted to the development of Native American studies as an academic discipline. She retired from her long academic career at Eastern Washington University in 1993, returning to her home in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has held several visiting professorships since retirement. In 2009, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.^[3]

Bibliography

• From the river's edge (NY: Arcade, 1991).

Poetry

• I remember the fallen trees : new and selected poems (Cheney, WA: Eastern Washington UP, 1998).

Short stories

• The power of horses and other stories (NY: Arcade, 1990).
• Seek the house of relatives (Marvin, SD: Blue Cloud Quarterly Press, 1983).
• Then Badger said this (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1983).

Non-fiction

• A Separate Country: Postcoloniality and American Indian Nations (Texas Tech University Press, 2011).
• Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth (Illinois UP 2001).
• Politics of Hallowed Ground : Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty (with Mario Gonzalez) (Illinois UP, 1999).
• Why I can't read Wallace Stegner and other essays : a tribal voice (Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Renaissance
• Native American Studies

References

1. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, "A Mixed-Blood, Tribeless Voice in American Indian Literatures: Michael Dorris," in Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth
2. accessed 20 Sep 2014.
3. List of NWCA Lifetime Achievement Awards, accessed 6 Aug 2010.

External links

• Official ECL website