Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge: Family Ties, Warrior Culture, Commodity Foods, Rez Dogs, and the Sacred.(Book review)

Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge: Family Ties, Warrior Culture, Commodity Foods, Rez Dogs, and the Sacred by Victor Glover. Book Publishing Company, 2000. Paper. 157 pp. ISBN Number 1-57067-165-6.

Glover sets us on a path of discovery to ground us in living at one time on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We get a multi-faceted range of stories to present series of life styles with people helping each other to subsist on a day by day basis. Along comes glimpses of vehicles that do work, but perhaps are not legal for off reservation travel. Within this mix comes a variety of flatlanders for every reason under the sun as Glover presents for all to see. Glimpses of this and that arise from the author's straight forward writing style. He correctly cautions his readers to respect all cultures and leave your watches at home out of respect for those on "Indian Time."

We get scenes of sweat lodges, conducted by one person or another, with such happenings becoming social as well as religious affairs. Glover recounts that the Sun Dance went underground from 1882 until 1934, at a time when a very repressive white culture was bent on destroying Indian dances and culture. It is a small wonder, therefore, that current forces would like to restrict religious activities to Indians only. ...