Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past

By Diane Wilson and Diane Wilson

Book Overview

A child of a typical 1950s suburb unearths her mother's hidden heritage, launching a rich and magical exploration of her own identity and her family's powerful Native American past.

"One day I realize that my entire back seat is filled with relatives who wonder why I'm not paying more attention to their part of the family story. . . . Sooner or later they all come up to the front seat and whisper stories in my ear."

Growing up in the 1950s in suburban Minneapolis, Diane Wilson had a family like everybody else's. Her Swedish American father was a salesman at Sears and her mother drove her brothers to baseball practice and went to parent-teacher conferences.

But in her thirties, Diane began to wonder why her mother didn't speak of her past. So she traveled to South Dakota and Nebraska, searching out records of her relatives through six generations, hungering to know their stories. She began to write a haunting account of the lives of her Dakota Indian family, based on research, to recreate their oral history that was lost, or repressed, or simply set aside as gritty issues of survival demanded attention.

Spirit Car is an exquisite counterpoint of memoir and carefully researched fiction, a remarkable narrative that ties modern Minnesotans to the trauma of the Dakota War. Wilson found her family's love and humor--and she discovered just how deeply our identities are shaped by the forces of history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873517652
• ISBN13: 9780873517652
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Borealis Books
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A stirring combination of history and memoir

The road to discovering the details of one's family tree can be an emotional ride, especially when potentially painful memories are uncovered. Diane Wilson, the daughter of a Swedish American father and a mother with Native American roots, sets out to fill in the blanks of her maternal ancestry while her mother is still alive to confirm them. She wants to figure out her place within the wider view of the world, and more specifically, within the history and geography of her part of it: Minnesota and the Dakotas and their Native populations. Her narrative weaves back and forth: from her own genealogical research and interviews with her mother and aunts, to the fate of the Dakota Sioux who lived along the Minnesota River in 1862. By working both ends, she comes upon her own truths, somewhere in the middle. Here she provides insights that traditional history texts cannot. Wilson relates her story within the framework of her participation in the Dakota Commemorative March of 2002, which duplicated another "Trail of Tears" march of 150 miles from the Lower Sioux Agency in Redwood to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. To walk where her own people have walked serves as a powerful culmination to her research. Anyone who has driven the interstates and back roads of the Northern Plains will recognize many of Wilson's routes, but probably not her specific destinations. With her genealogical mission in mind, she feels at times as though her car is filled with the ghosts of her ancestors, all demanding her attention and to tell their own stories. Surely hers took on the characteristics of a magical quest in search of self. "Spirit Car" is one woman's story and memoir, successfully connecting the Then to the Now in a very personal way. Readers should be grateful to be able to tag along.

An honorable tribute of a proud people

Jumping into this work was like being wrapped in a time machine and taken back to places and circumstances hidden from history. It carries the feel of a story being shared by Lakota elders in the context of one families linage. So personnal, yet compelling as it takes you on a journey into the depths of Souix people at the apex of cultural modification programs for Native Americans. It's a view of history reserved for those who made the trip. A great read anyway you look at it!!

Great way to learn dakota history we weren't taught in school

I couldn't put it down...read it over the weekend. This was a great book to get an intimate perspective of dakota native american life during the 1860's that was woven into the tracing of family roots. I learned a lot of details from that time and bonded with the family-I loved seeing pictures of several generations and following the impact of how events that happened long ago still impact us generations later.