Ella Deloria is a linguistic scholar from South Dakota, precisely the native Lakota people. She has authored several linguistic texts and pioneered language ideas among the Dakota people. Her achievements in the anthropology industry are enviable, having started writing an article in a journal to publish books and even a Sioux-English translation dictionary. She is known for women empowerment and language abilities, but her prowess in language studies without having any background in anthropology studies is inspirational.
The most interesting fact about Ella Deloria was her anthropology skills, despite not studying the same in college. Despite her prowess in anthropology, Deloria was a teaching graduate who only came to realize her unique abilities when a professor at Columbia Teachers College tasked her with translating and expounding on Lakota texts. It is this first assignment that encouraged her to engage in linguistic analysis and translation. After gaining experience in language translation and analysis knowledge, she published her maiden work in the Journal of American Folk-Lore called Sun Dance, one of the best-sellers (Murray 1974). Through this achievement, her profile in language studies grew significantly.
Deloria had a trajectory growth in her linguistic career after she relocated to New York. First, she identified her niche, and she specialized in analyzing tribal structure, roles of women, and kinship. Without anthropology skills, she managed to translate several manuscripts to her native Dakota language. The height of her achievements was writing the first Sioux-English dictionary that contained several Dakota ad Lakota texts (Murray 1974). Her contribution to the Native American ethnography was vital as she created the first written work for a plains tribe. Besides her translation abilities, she took other people’s work, analyzed them, and developed landmark manuscripts and novels.
Despite having minimal anthropology study knowledge, Ella Deloria pioneered critical language studies vital in understanding native languages in the US. In her career, Deloria has expounded on the Lakota language, as skill she has leveraged to tell transmit ideas about the plain tribe. Deloria’s linguistic career grew at an unprecedented speed when she moved to New York. Her understanding of the Lakota text is interesting and educative in different ways.
Bibliography
Murray, Janette K. 1974. “Ella Deloria: A Biographical Sketch and Literary Analysis.” Education Commons. Web.