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And many are doubtful of Hill's claim that she translated her novel from English to archaic Lakota and then back to English to catch Sioux rhythms and emotional tone. Says Sioux Author Vine Deloria Jr. (Custer Died for Your Sins): "How in hell do you type up a manuscript in an ancient language that has never been written down and apparently has no symbols or alphabet?" Now Hill says she has been misunderstood: she did not write a complete Lakota version, but translated important concepts and phrases into Lakota, researched the root meaning of each Lakota term, then redid the English version to fit.
A more serious objection is that Hill has overstated Sioux individualism, extolling "the language of the ego" and depicting the Lakota as free from all restraints. Complains Tom Simms, a non-Indian who teaches on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota: "She takes a communal, family-oriented society and turns it into an individualistic society to the point where anyone can do anything he pleases." Hill, a friend and ardent admirer of the radical individualist Ayn Rand, has been accused of projecting Rand's notions onto the Sioux. One critic headlined his review of Hanta Yo, "Ayn Rand Meets Hiawatha."
The critics have also taken aim at Hill's Sioux collaborator, Chunksa Yuha, who spent 14 years working on the book with her in return for room, board and cigarette money. In the introduction, Chunksa Yuha writes that he was "kept out of schools and away from contact with whites until age twelve" to learn the ancient, suppressed ceremonies. But Donald Gurnoe Jr., of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Intertribal Board, says Chunksa Yuha's real name is Lorenzo Blacksmith, the son of an Episcopal deacon, and the National Archives show that Blacksmith attended Bureau of Indian Affairs schools when he was between the ages of five and 18.
Hill's critics seem to think that any such book should have been written by an Indian, preferably a Sioux with a Ph.D, in anthropology. Says Deloria: "Why do these non-Indians want to write about Indians? Is Hanta Yo more accurate than Black Elk Speaks?"* Hill replies coolly enough to the Anglo baiting: "These are not Indian-thinking people any more if they can't accept Hanta Yo."
Deloria, Gurnoe, Archambault, Medicine and others have formed an ad hoc committee to lobby against Hanta Yo. Wolper, who sees a golden television property turning to lead, has proposed setting up a Sioux advisory board. For the lobbyists, that is not enough: at week's end they were still demanding that the TV project be killed.
* For this 1932 classic, Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux medicine man who witnessed the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, S. Dak., collaborated with white Author John G. Neihardt.