Delphine Red Shirt
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Delphine Red Shirt, Lakota author
Delphine Red Shirt, Oglala Lakota, spent her earliest years off the reservation in a small town in northern Nebraska where she attended public school, learning to speak English for the first time. After her family returned to the reservation, she first attended government schools and later the Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic high school in Pine Ridge. She attended Regis College in Denver, with a major in Accounting and a minor in History.
Delphine has been a member of the United States Marine Corps. She served as the Chairperson of the United Nations NGO Committee on the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People: 1995-96, and as the United Nations Representative for the Four Directions Council: International Indigenous Organization with access to the UN from 1994 to 1997. During this time she also received her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies in Creative Writing from Wesleyan University and was an Advisor to Native American Students at Yale University.
Recently Delphine has served as an Adjunct Professor of American Studies and English at Yale University in the Fall, 2001 term and at Connecticut College during the Spring term in 2001 and 2002. She has maintained an extensive schedule of public speaking and appearances and has narrated film for Peabody Museum at Yale University. She had given interviews on National Public Radio, as well as other radio and television interviews.
She is now Series Editor for The University of Nebraska Press: "Race and Ethnicity in the American West": A series that bridges the gap between old and new western history, suggesting an alternative that examines the racial and ethnic experience as a primary factor in the establishment of the West as a region, thus nurturing a dynamic, holistic perception of western history. Books published in the series will explore the dynamic interactions between groups over time, with comparative approaches that showcase this interaction as a primary factor in creating the West's unique regional identity. This is an aggressive new vision for western history that combines process with place.
Delphine has been a freelance writer and syndicated columnist for Indian Country Today, the Lakota Nation Journal of Rapid City, SD and the Hartford Courant newspaper in Hartford, CT. She is now a student in the doctoral program in Native American Studies at the University of Arizona. She is also working diligently toward establishing the Northern Plains Intertribal Preparatory School on land she has acquired near the Black Hills in South Dakota.
Awards
Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter has been nominated for a 2002 American Book Award and a 2003 Spur Award. Delphine was awarded a grant from the Endangered Languages Fund to support her work transcribing the recordings made of conversations with her mother, recordings that were incorporated into Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter.
Writing available online
When my Black Hills Money comes in … we will never sell these sacred hills: a Lakota perspective.
Interview with Delphine on Native America Calling [RealAudio]
Books by Delphine Red Shirt
Bead on an Anthill: A Lakota Childhood, Univ. Nebraska Press.
- Publisher's page for the book
- Book review from Utopia, Univ. Texas, Austin
- Book review on the Oyate site
Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter, Univ. Nebraska Press.
- Publisher's page for the book
- Book review on the Oyate site
- Book review on the Cultural Survival site
- Book review from the Washington Post
Anthologies
Western Women's Reader: The Remarkable Writings of Women Who Shaped the American West, Spanning 300 Years, Lillian Schlissel and Catherine Lavender (Editors), DIANE Pub.
Tongue Tied: The Lives of Multilingual Students in Public Schools, Rowman & Littlefield Pub.
Interviews
Blood Memory: Interview with Delphine Red Shirt by Barbara Sorensen, Winds of Change, V 18, No. 1, Winter 2003.
Delphine interviewed by Chris Eyre, Native Peoples, March-April 2002.
See Also
Voices in the Gaps has a page devoted to Delphine.
A short biography is available from the Internet Public Library's Native American Authors Project.
This page is part of the Storytellers: Native American Authors Online project.
