The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature and Cultures Workshop is pleased to welcome

Julia Kopesky

PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, University of Chicago

Recovering Michel Renville’s Dakota Stories, 1879–1893

Tuesday, October 28, 2025, 11 am – 12:20 pm CST

Wieboldt 130 and on Zoom

with a response from

Heidi Katter, PhD student in History, Yale University

Michel Renville (Beṡe, ca. 1822-1899) was a Mdewakanton Dakota scout, writer, and community activist, and an informant for the missionary ethnologist Stephen R. Riggs (1812–1883). Renville’s contributions to the bilingual newspaper Iapi Oaye (1871-1939), and to Riggs’ academic texts on Dakota language and culture, simultaneously preserve and demonstrate his profound knowledge of traditional Dakota lifeways. His literary contributions have supported over a century of research in anthropology, linguistics, and Native/Indigenous studies. Yet Renville himself is rarely acknowledged by white and Native academics, his literary remains effectively buried by centuries of salvage ethnography. This paper seeks to recover five traditional Dakota stories (hituƞkakaƞ) attributed to Michel Renville, but published under Riggs’ name, between 1879 and 1893. Textual critical analyses reveal the processes by which Renville adapted traditionally oral stories into written manuscripts, from which data on Dakota language and culture continues to be selectively extracted. Comparison of Renville’s Dakota words to the translations and analyses of later scholars supports the recovery of poetic techniques and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) heretofore ignored by or unavailable to scholars. This recovery supports the use of Renville’s manuscripts in service of contemporary efforts towards language revitalization and cultural sovereignty in L/N/Dakota communities. Recovering Renville’s literature (as distinct from the work of Riggs or other scholars) supports a relational framework for Native literary criticism, through which Renville is connected not only to his fellow informants and missionaries, but to his L/N/Dakota-speaking descendants and relatives living today.

Julia’s paper (to be read in advance) and the workshop Zoom link can be found here. The password will be distributed to our listserv. To join, click here and go to “Subscribe.”