The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge is a fascinating book and an excellent example of how authors can find interesting ways to structure a historical narrative. Dull Knifes was recommended to me by a public history colleague who knows a lot more about American history than I do, and I bought it for my father-in-law for Christmas some years ago. I came across it recently while staying with them and decided I should really read it for myself. It’s a very easy read, at least in terms of the writing – Joe Starita’s background is in journalism and he’s an excellent writer – but content wise it can at times be challenging and emotional. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge examines the lives of a single family of Oglala Souix Indians, highlighting one person each across four generations. In doing this it merges a wider history of the Oglala Souix/Northern Cheyenne with the specific lives of these men to create a work that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Slightly more than half of the book is dedicated to the first two generations of the Dull Knife family. It begins with Chief Dull Knife, a Northern Cheyene chief from Montana who lived during the Indian Wars – leading his people to a reservation in Oklahoma under threat by the US government before leading them back north in defiance of that same government rather than letting his people die in an alien land. His youngest son George Dull Knife was left behind on Dull Knife’s march north and ultimately was raised by members of his extended family who happened to be Oglala Souix in the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. As an adult George toured Europe and America with Buffalo Bills’ Wild West shows before returning home and spending decades working as a law officer in the reservation – subversively participating in and refusing to report traditional Lakota dances and rituals performed in the backwoods in defiance of US law and policy. While examining these men’s personal lives, the book also covers decades of racist US policy towards Indians in the plains and includes a deeply distressing and detailed account of the massacre at Wounded Knee. This stuff is hard but important reading.
The central framing of the book is George’s eldest son, Guy Dull Knife Sr., who was born in 1899, fought in World War I, and at time of the book’s writing was in his mid-90s. Vignettes of Guy in his nursing home during the present day are interspersed across the narrative of his family and even when the book moves on to discuss his son, Vietnam veteran and artist Guy Dull Knife Jr., the father remains central to that story. Again, the book provides a fascinating, and upsetting, history of 20th century US policies towards the Lakota as well as internal divisions within the Pine Ridge Reservation and the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
I would happily recommend The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge to anyone interested in a history of relations between Plains Indians and the United States’ government and military and the consequences of decades of deliberately genocidal policy on the people of the plains, but the book is also more than that. By focusing on this one family, Joe Starita injects intimacy into a narrative that could become overwhelming. You become invested in the Dull Knife family – not just the main male line but also their wives and daughters as well. When family members die or they suffer the loss of a good friend, you feel it. When Guy Sr. has to go into full-time care and doesn’t want to be separated from his family, it doesn’t feel abstract, it feels like you know them. This intimacy makes parts of the book more intense, but it also helps to blunt some of the more harrowing elements of the history. You know the Dull Knifes survive these hardships, so while Wounded Knee (both the massacre and the later standoff between AIM and the FBI) remains hard reading, there is a little bit of positive to consider – not everyone dies, the family survives.
In that way it is also a subtle rebuttal to the notion that the plains Indians, or any other native group, are dead and gone. It rejects the idea that America’s genocide of them is purely past tense and nothing that can be done about it now. It embraces the complexities of being an Oglala Souix in the modern era and while it refuses to be completely depressed about the future of the Oglala and their related tribes it also pulls no punches on what was done to them and the problems they face. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge isn’t just an amazing book on the Oglala Souix, it is an important portrait of America and what it means to be American – necessary reading for pretty much anyone who calls themselves by that name.