Reviews
"Jeffrey Ostler provides a new view of the Sioux nation and its people. It is an important addition to the extensive literature on the Sioux wars and United States Indian policy. Readers interested in the late nineteenth-century Indian wars and U.S. Indian policy will find this book insightful and thought-provoking." - The Journal of Military History, Stacy W. Reaves, Tulsa Community College, "Ostler's book provides a fascinating reexamination of major events in nineteenth-century Plains Sioux history." - Great Plains Quarterly, "Superb Analysis...Ostler is exceptional in his skillful examination of primary sources--a dialogue fully presented within the text and footnotes. Incorporating a breadth of Lakota words and concepts, the author's overall contribution is a rich cultural study of the Lakota that will appeal to scholars and general readers alike...this study is now the gold standard on the Lakota Ghost Dance." - History: Reviews of New Books, 'Jeffery Ostler's The Palins Sioux and U.S. Colonialism form Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee offers professional historians and history students an insider's perspective of U.S. expansionism. … What makes Ostler's study valuable is that it can serve both as as a reference work for professors who need to expand or support their claims of American settlement as well as to Student's requiring an introductory text to American colonialism.' Cercles, ' … a new way of viewing the history of the Plains Sioux and their interaction with US government … author forces the reader to reconsider previously held ideas and to question the validity of sources usually employed to narrate the past … Ostler seeks to untangle assumptions about the motives of Ghost Dancers or of leaders like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, illustrating the complexity of each choice made by the Sioux … Ostler's re-examination of the Plains Sioux story adds another important work to a recent wave of scholarship that sees significant agency in colonized people. this important layer of the human story helps correct the long canon of history written by the conquerors or colonizers. the author uses an engaging, narrative style and weaves story and analysis skillfully together. … excellent work and a significant addition to scholarship on the Plains Sioux.'Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 'Jeffery Ostler's The Palins Sioux and U.S. Colonialism form Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee offers professional historians and history students an insider's perspective of U.S. expansionism. ... What makes Ostler's study valuable is that it can serve both as as a reference work for professors who need to expand or support their claims of American settlement as well as to Student's requiring an introductory text to American colonialism.' Cercles, "Ostler revisits Plains Sioux history and offers several convincing revisions of previous studies...Strongly recommended." - Choice, G. Gagnon, University of North Dakota, "Ostler brilliantly reveals the fissures, continuities, insufficiencies and power that characterize a century of colonial encounters. His powerfully narrated history offers crucial lessons for anyone considering the dynamics of colonial domination and resistance in Native North America-or elsewhere, for that matter." - Philip J. Deloria, University of Michigan, "Without scrimping on close-up detail or native perspective, Ostler takes the most worked-over of American Indian historical sagas, the Sioux wars, and presents an absolutely riveting, utterly original and consistently persuasive narrative...With this book the bar has been raised for all historians of Indian-white relations." - Peter Nabokov, UCLA, ' … a new way of viewing the history of the Plains Sioux and their interaction with US government … author forces the reader to reconsider previously held ideas and to question the validity of sources usually employed to narrate the past … Ostler seeks to untangle assumptions about the motives of Ghost Dancers or of leaders like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, illustrating the complexity of each choice made by the Sioux … Ostler's re-examination of the Plains Sioux story adds another important work to a recent wave of scholarship that sees significant agency in colonized people. this important layer of the human story helps correct the long canon of history written by the conquerors or colonizers. the author uses an engaging, narrative style and weaves story and analysis skillfully together. … excellent work and a significant addition to scholarship on the Plains Sioux.' Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, "This volume is both remarkably informative and interpretively unsettling...Ostler's work is provocative, penetrating, and at times perplexing, but it offers the reader much detailed material unearthed from archives by a diligent historian...The author is to be commended for his attention to genealogies, his accurate translations of applicable texts, and his use of a network of consultants who have taught him much about cultural matters...Ostler's interpretations need to be read and debated, and consequently this book deserves to be taught at the university level, especially to graduate students." David Reed Miller, ' ... a new way of viewing the history of the Plains Sioux and their interaction with US government ... author forces the reader to reconsider previously held ideas and to question the validity of sources usually employed to narrate the past ... Ostler seeks to untangle assumptions about the motives of Ghost Dancers or of leaders like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, illustrating the complexity of each choice made by the Sioux ... Ostler's re-examination of the Plains Sioux story adds another important work to a recent wave of scholarship that sees significant agency in colonized people. this important layer of the human story helps correct the long canon of history written by the conquerors or colonizers. the author uses an engaging, narrative style and weaves story and analysis skillfully together. ... excellent work and a significant addition to scholarship on the Plains Sioux.' Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
