1. In the second (1961) edition of Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt changed the title page of the text from “as told to John Neihardt” to “as told through John Neihardt” (my italics). (a) Explain why you believe this change is significant as well as what you think it suggests about the relationship: (b) between Neihardt and Black Elk, and (c) between Neihardt and Black Elk Speaks.
2. Mixed-blood Indian critic Hertha Wong has argued that precontact written texts–as well as the oral tradition–help explain one of the fundamental differences between American Indian and Western autobiographies. Wong argues that the pictographic writings of the Sioux and other Plains tribes tended, like the oral tradition, to tell stories about the self which might be more accurately described as “communo-bio-oratory”(community-life-speaking) rather than “auto-bio-graphical” (self-life-writing), since they were about the person’s life in the context of their human, spiritual, and natural communities and the writings were intended to be part of an oral recitation, rather than to stand on their own. Based on her argument, how do you think Black Elk Speaks is a communobiooratory (community biography vs. autobiography)? How is it not a communobiooratory?
