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Wilson, Diane Reserve Kit Spirit Car : Journey to a Dakota Past Part Dakota, Wilson delves into her mother's family history, which leads her to the Lower Sioux Reservation, on the Minnesota River, and the Dakota War, which took place there in 1862. After the Treaty of 1851, the government had persuaded, manipulated, and threatened the Dakota to move to that reservation, giving up their hunting land and burial grounds to white settlers. The checkerboard pattern of white and Indian land resulted in many mixed marriages. When hostilities erupted in 1862, families were forced to choose sides, their survival taking precedence over the needs of their communities. As Wilson discovered in her research, each succeeding generation felt somehow diminished by their mixed blood. Her mother and all of her sisters married men of European descent. One aunt tells her, We sat on the fence between white and Indian. . . . You can't really adjust to either one. Wilson had to convince her relatives to tell these moving stories, and now she is determined that they not be forgotten, for we are the sum of those who have come before us. --Deborah Donovan Copyright 2006 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. 218 p. 2006 921 W6848 Discussion Questions

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