William Wayne Red Hat, Jr.: Cheyenne Keeper of the Arrowsis an as-told-to autobiography that tells two intertwined stories, the Keeper of the Arrows' story and the story of a decades long friendship between two families. Mediating those two stories is the nearly invisible presence of anthropologist Karl Schlesier, the volume editor's father. While not to diminish Sibylle M. Schlesier's skillful editing and obvious respect for and understanding of the Cheyenne Way, or William Wayne Red Hat, Jr.'s, insightful and often incisive reflections on Cheyenne identity and the role of Cheyenne tradition in the world today, it was Karl Schlesier's work among the Southern Cheyenne that first brought the Red Hat and Schlesier families together in 1969. That coming together laid the ground work for this important collaborative effort by his daughter, Sibylle, and Bill Red Hat, the Southern Cheyenne's current Keeper of the Arrows. Karl Schlesier has no voice in this volume but his presence nonetheless pervades it, although never to the point of distraction. Through it and through Sibylle's and Bill's reflexive narratives, the careful reader can discern and begin to trace the ramifications of the bonds that sometimes develop between anthropologists and members of the communities they study. This is one of the volume's most significant scholarly contributions. The long-standing connection between these two families has clearly shaped the narratives presented here. It is up to the reader to decide if that constitutes a strength or a weakness, an assessment that can only derive from his or her own situated reading of the stories.

The main story told is that of Bill Red Hat and, much to Sibylle Schlesier's credit, he tells it with relatively little editorial interference. The resulting narrative is part autobiography and part what she calls personal testimony. As Sibylle Schlesier quite accurately observes, in reflecting upon his life and role as the Southern Cheyenne's Keeper of the Arrows, Bill is "intellectually negotiating ways to connect the past with the present and future" and is "connecting old knowledge with new" (p. 10). This reflects his repeatedly stated desire to maintain and perpetuate Cheyenne tradition and identity despite the daunting challenges posed by modern life on a reservation shared with the Arapaho. Like many indigenous spiritual leaders, Bill draws upon the past, conceptualized here as Cheyenne tradition, to solve current problems and, it is his expressed hope, to shape a distinctively Cheyenne future for his people.

Readers who expect Red Hat to reveal esoteric details of Southern Cheyenne ritual practices and spiritual life will surely be disappointed because he gives nothing away. He realizes that meaningful knowledge and genuine understanding require honest personal engagement and don't come easily. "All of This Has to Be Learned" (p. 53), "You Have to Be Living It" (p. 59), and "You Have to Go Way Deep" (p. 98) are not only recurrent themes in his narrative but also chapter headings in the book. Those readers looking for insights into how contemporary Native American religious leaders, like their indigenous counterparts worldwide, mediate tradition and modernity, however, will be rewarded for their efforts, particularly if they read beyond the text, as Sibylle Schlesier suggests they should (p.15). But, as Bill would say, such insights won't come easily, in part because his voice remains his own throughout the book. His relatively unedited words explore and circle back around a great many ideas and topics, a departure from the linear narrative progression one is accustomed to in autobiographical writing.

Bill Red Hat views the preservation of Cheyenne oral history and language as essential to the preservation of Cheyenne culture and identity. His uneasiness about capturing or freezing in writing inherently dynamic stories whose essential meanings derive from the totality of their many oral tellings permeates the book. Nonetheless, he sees this textual collaboration as a necessary means of insuring that aspects of the Cheyenne Way are preserved for future generations, even if the end product is incomplete and imperfect, as both he and Sibylle Schlesier recognize it is. Counterbalancing what, from the point of view of an oral culture, is a static and stilted mode of presentation are Red Hat's undulating reflections upon the processes whereby he has acquired his knowledge and achieved understanding and his explanations of how his ritual practices work. Missing from his narrative are detailed descriptions of those practices. Instead he illustrates his points with his own life experiences, references to current events, and examples drawn from the Euroamerican cultural tradition. Bill Red Hat is a humble man. He talks about his life not because he thinks it is particularly noteworthy, although it is. Instead, he uses his experiences to illuminate the Cheyenne Way. In doing so, he discusses aspects of Cheyenne history, comments on Cheyenne politics, and touches upon what he sees as the negative impact of the Indian Reorganization Act. He also recounts his journey to becoming the Keeper of the Arrows and describes the day to day difficulties he faces in performing his sacred duties.

The other story told here is that of an enduring relationship between two families with different cultural heritages. It is a reflexive (and perhaps unintentional) story of meaningful cross-cultural interaction. Although important in its own right, it is secondary to Red Hat's narrative, through which it seamlessly weaves. It is also a story told from two points of view, that of Sibylle Schlesier and that of Bill Red Hat. Sibylle describes her experience of that relationship in the introduction and footnotes; Bill incorporates his within his more broadly defined narrative. Some readers may find the contrast between these two points of view and their different emphases of interest.

Most people will read this book for Red Hat's story, which is an important addition to the literature on Cheyenne religion because of its practitioner-centered emphasis on knowledge acquisition and understanding, topics too often neglected. But it is also worth reading for its story of friendship between two families. Because, in a certain sense, it is a story about the interaction between anthropologists and the Others they study, it merits reading on methodological grounds as well. People interested in Cheyenne history and culture or in Native American life more generally will find this book particularly relevant in that it accepts ritual and tradition as dynamic elements of contemporary life rather than brackets them off as relics of a remembered and only occasionally celebrated past.

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