On this date in 1925, the 1926 Dacotah yearbook of the University of North Dakota was dedicated to Dr. Orin Grant Libby. UND's student newspaper, the Dakota Student, called him “one of the prominent Indian authorities of the Northwest."
It wrote, “Dr. Libby's work in collecting the facts concerning the early history of North Dakota have gained him wide recognition... Dr. Libby has done a great deal of research work among North Dakota Indians, and his Indian legends given at the story hour time, from seven to eight, over KFJM, are the result of this work.”
The 1926 Dacotah yearbook's theme was “Indian lore,” but the “Indian lore” of the editors and the “Indian lore” of professional ethnologists such as Dr. Melvin Gilmore were quite different.
Dr. Gilmore was curator of the State Historical Society of North Dakota from 1916 to 1923 before working for the Museum of the American Indian in New York. He had penned “Prairie Smoke,” a sympathetic account of legends from native tribes of the northern plains. He had been ceremonially adopted as a son in an Arikara ritual.
Dr. Libby, a member of the UND faculty, was also well-regarded. The 1926 Dacotah yearbook's dedication page to Libby proclaimed, “To a friend of the Dacotah Indians, educator and historian; a man who has worked as secretary of the State Historical Society to preserve the story of the Redman's dwindling nation that we might have permanently intact this source of inspiration and tradition...”
The yearbook's foreword reads in part: “We have gone for tradition and counsel to the Dacotah Indians whose trail, marked by the embers of smoldering campfires, is blazed across the pages of our history. We have attempted to depict, as applicable to college life, the many-sided, colorful existence of an Indian. ... this was his life and is ours.”
The actual content of the 1926 Dacotah yearbook simply perpetuated contemporary stereotypes of Indians, presenting several clichés that are recognized today as offensive. Tomahawks, tobacco pipes, feathers – lots of feathers. Although Dr. Libby was popular among students, it is unfortunate that the yearbook's content did not better reflect Dr. Libby's work or the people he studied.
Dakota Datebook by Andrew Alexis Varvel
