On Tuesday, April 3, at 7:30 PM, Professor Raymond DeMallie, Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University, will present a lecture on

Lakota Winter Counts and the Cultural Interpretation of Time

The Lakota kept pictorial records that designated each passing winter with a mnemonic representing a memorable event from the previous year. These served as calendars to name the years and also formed the basis for a native history. One of the winter count keepers created as well a history of the world from the beginning, represented by a series of tipi circles that represented not years, but generations. Anthropological study of winter counts began in the 1870s and has continued since. This presentation will introduce winter counts as a genre, discuss the nature of the events they commemorate, and offer some interpretation of what they reveal about native Lakota concepts of time and history.

The lecture will be held in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies on the Notre Dame campus. It is free and open to the public. A brief reception will follow.

The lecture is sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar program and is being co-hosted by Phi Beta Kappa’s Epsilon of Indiana chapter and the Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame. 

Professor DeMallie is the director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University Bloomington.

For more information, please contact Mark Schurr, Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame. (574)-631-7638