From the desk of Emily Levine
Emily Levine is an independent scholar and the editor of Witness: A Húŋkpapȟa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas.
I am privileged and honored to be the editor of Josephine Waggoner’s monumental life’s work. What historian would say no to editing one of the few new Native manuscripts to come to light in recent decades? What historian would say no to bringing to publication the voluminous work of a Hunkpapa historian long unrecognized? What historian would say no to taking on this work when asked to do so by members of the woman’s family? Looking back, I am chagrined to say, this one. While I was pleased with my work on Waggoner’s collaboration with Susan Bettelyoun, published as With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman Tells Her People’s History (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), I was not ready to undertake another long-term project and had work of my own that I was interested in pursuing. I think I actually said no twice before I gave in and agreed to compile and edit this new manuscript material.
Would I have agreed if I’d known it would be a thirteen-year-long labor of love, consuming time and resources I often didn’t have? That it would take over my life and become a single-minded pursuit? I believe there is truth in what members of Josephine’s family have told me: that I was the one meant to do this work and that I cared enough to do it justice. Perhaps it helped that I am not an academic, that I could work without deadlines, that no promotion or tenure considerations were involved, and that I did not suffer the scrutiny of colleagues. My loyalty lay only with Josephine Waggoner, her family, and the Lakota people.
