Transtextual Relationality in Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Literature

This dissertation explores the published and unpublished oeuvre of Dakota anthropologist Ella Deloria through the critical framework of transtexuality as a feature of Indigenous kinship discourse. By connecting Deloria to her literary kin, including peers, ancestors, and descendants, I propose a relational view of Dakota and Lakota literature written in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ languages and English. I analyze Deloria's processes of transcription and translation of traditionally oral literature, and juxtapose the generic qualities of her folkloric adaptations with the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ genres of ohúŋkakaŋ and hituƞkakaƞ from which she took inspiration. I then compare Deloria's folklore to texts composed by other anthropologists, traditional storytellers, and activists, both Native and non-Native, in multiple languages. Of particular relevance are Deloria's textual transformations of stories composed by the Lakota writer George Bushotter, the Dakota minister Michel Renville, and the Lakota oral storyteller Makhúla. The form and content of these traditional oral themes and their variations are discussed with reference to interdisciplinary research into traditional Establishing transtextual relationships between Deloria and other storytellers through her archives serves two purposes. Firstly, it allows me to position Deloria as a nexus of the Dakota and Lakota literary corpus, because the vast extent and influence of her archives connects her to nearly every writer of Dakota and Lakota traditional stories between the 19th and 21st centuries. Secondly, distinguishing between different kinds of relationships helps address issues of authenticity, which are especially relevant for efforts at linguistic and cultural reclamation in heritage-language speech communities. The dissertation concludes with an exploration of the pedagogical utility of Deloria's archives for teaching literature and culture in a language-immersion classroom. I argue for the adaptation of archival texts as teaching tools by selecting one of Deloria's folkloric texts, analyzing its transtexts, and presenting a translation into the Lakota language for heritage-language students.