Yeah, I was thinking some more biographical material on her would be good. I've read one other book of hers, Dakota Texts, which was really nice, straight folklore. I believe it comes in bilingual editions, and her contribution to Sioux linguistics seems to have been very significant, since few people had an interest in preserving such things back in the day. I feel like she did construct a dictionary, even, but I could be thinking of someone else.

Anyway, yeah, Deloria seems very cool. There were two other women I'm aware of who contributed significantly to research/preservation of Indian culture who might be worth looking up. The earlier is Frances Densmore, who studied native rituals and especially music, recording a lot of different tribes' songs on wax cylinders. Then there's Angie Debo who more recently made some interesting investigations into all of the bullshit that was perpetrated on the Indians after their military conquest, i.e. the way their tribal lands were diffused with bogus legislation and other 'legal' ways they were turned into poverty-stricken hopeless people in the post-reservation period. She also wrote some good just general history of Indians.